


california king bed

by orphan_account



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Episode Related, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Polyamory, Season/Series 11, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-06 00:07:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6728815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em> In any other circumstances Dee wouldn’t exactly be complaining about sharing her bed with not one but two admittedly decent-looking guys. There’s just the small fact that one of them is a repressed gay man who she can barely stand on a good day, and the other is her twin brother.</em>
</p>
<p>Mac, Dee and Dennis are now forced to share not only an apartment but also a bed, which means that certain truths will inevitably come to light. Or, the one where Dennis has been banging both Mac and Dee on the down-low for years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dee

**Author's Note:**

> I can't quite believe that I wrote a multi-chaptered Sunny fic, especially for a threesome that I'm pretty sure nobody but me even cares about, but I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that these three sharing a bed is canon now, so here we are. I already have the remaining two installments written, save for a few minor editing tweaks, so they should be posted up over the next few days or so - I just felt that the story worked better broken up into three slightly more manageable chunks.
> 
> Takes place over the second half of season 11, picking up immediately after "Mac & Dennis Move To the Suburbs" and following canon events through to "The Gang Goes To Hell". Additional warnings for the first part include voyeurism, mentions of animal cruelty, unprotected sex, one use of the homophobic f-slur and a slightly flippant reference to suicide, as well as everything covered by the tags. In case anybody was concerned, there is no direct sexual contact between Mac and Dee in this fic, save for brief reference to an incident in the past. 
> 
> Also, this is by far the most sexually explicit fic I've written in this fandom to date. I'm sorry/you're welcome.

**01\. dee**

For the fifth time in the last week, Dee realizes on waking up that she isn’t alone and spends the next several seconds wondering whether she got lucky last night before the fog clears from her mind and she remembers The Bed Situation.

Maybe that’s a misleading way of thinking about it, she muses. After all, it isn’t the bed itself that’s the problem. On its own, the bed would be fucking _great_ : California king-size, mattress just the right firmness for her back; Frank had spared no expenses. No, it’s the people she has to s _hare_ the bed with that are currently causing her such a headache.

Goddamn Frank and his stupid bet. She’d had to go and get cocky, hadn’t she; nosing in just like Dennis always accuses her of doing and insisting on getting her side action. Though in her defense, she’d thought it would be an easy win. All Mac and Dennis had to do was _exist,_ just live for a month in a big, luxurious house, the kind that Dee could only dream of owning. Surely, she’d thought, even _they_ couldn’t manage to fuck that up – but apparently that was giving them too much credit.

At least the old man had gotten sick of their shit and left after the second night, but even that much is small consolation. Dee has no idea what went down between Mac and Dennis during their time in the suburbs, but their relationship has been frostier than she’s ever seen it since their return, and so she’d ended up getting shoved into the middle of the bed between them, a reluctant neutral zone in their ongoing cold war.

Bad enough that they’ve completely taken over her apartment – the month she spent without them is already beginning to feel like a fading dream – but now she has to put up with them in her bed, too, encroaching on her precious nighttime privacy. Dennis hogs the covers and sprawls into her space, as selfish and inconsiderate in his sleep as he is while he’s awake. By contrast, Mac sleeps right on the edge of the mattress like he’s trying to remain in as little contact with her as he can possibly get away with while they’re all crammed into the same bed – but he snores and sometimes even talks in his sleep, nonsensical ramblings that can keep her up well into the early hours of the morning.

The true irony of the situation, of course, is that Dee hasn’t gotten laid in far too long, and in any other circumstances she wouldn’t exactly be complaining about sharing her bed with not one but two admittedly decent-looking guys. There’s just the small fact that one of them is a repressed gay man who she can barely stand on a good day, and the other is her twin brother.

Which isn’t to say that she and Dennis haven’t _been there,_ because they definitely have. More than once, in fact. It’s always been sporadic and infrequent, and the last time was well over a year ago now, but they’ve been engaging in an on-again-off-again sexual relationship ever since their first year of college, both of them marooned in an unfamiliar place and turning to each other for what little comfort they could find.

It’s not exactly something that Dee is proud of, fucking her brother, not something she ever planned – but it’s been there for most of their adult lives, and by now she’s pretty much given up on trying to analyze what it might mean. For better or worse, it’s one of the few truly enjoyable things she has, and she’s not particularly inclined to question it too closely. It’s not as if they’re hurting anybody, except maybe themselves.

She knows that Dennis and Mac are fucking, too – had suspected as much for years, if she’s being honest, but she hadn’t truly gotten her confirmation until after they’d both moved in with her. She’s never actually _seen_ them, but she’d definitely heard them at it one night when they were too drunk to bother keeping their voices down. She’d lain awake in bed, listening to them fucking and wondering whether she should bang on the wall and tell them to keep the volume down, but in the end she’d settled for just slipping her hand inside her panties and guiltily getting herself off to the sound of their sex noises, letting her imagination run wild in picturing what exactly might be going down on the other side of her flimsy screen door.

She tells herself she doesn’t care, because Dennis is the biggest manwhore in Philadelphia and it’s not like they’d ever promised each other exclusivity – not like she’d ever _want_ that, even if it was on the table – but Mac is different to all the other people Dennis fucks around with. Mac has been there almost as long as Dee has, and she knows that as much as Dennis is capable of loving anybody, he loves Mac. She isn’t jealous, exactly, but it unsettles her, the fact that there’s another person in the world who knows Dennis almost as well as she does. Maybe even better than she does, at least in some respects.

Of the three of them Dennis is the only one that’s anywhere close to being a morning person, and nine days out of ten he’s the first to get up, leaving Dee alone in the bed with Mac – which is undeniably weird but, she has to admit, not entirely unpleasant. Snoring or no, Mac is considerably less irritating asleep than he is awake, and in the quiet of the early morning hours she tends to look on him a bit more fondly than she does during the cold light of day.

On this particular morning, she’s woken by the sounds of Dennis in a spectacularly foul mood, banging the kitchen cupboards and yelling about somebody eating all his cereal. Dee might’ve had something to do with that, but if he asks her directly she’s more than okay with pinning it on Mac.

As if on cue, Dennis bursts back into the bedroom and throws the empty cereal box at the bed. It hits Mac square in the chest and he wakes with a startled grunt, blinking dumbly up at Dennis.

“Get up, assholes,” Dennis greets them. “Which one of you was it?”

“What the hell are you talking about, dude?” Mac says, because he has no self-preservation instinct to speak of.

“Don’t give me that, you know damn well what I’m talking about. Don’t steal my shit, goddammit!”

With that, Dennis turns on his heel and storms back out, still muttering under his breath. Dee raises her eyebrows at Mac as if to say ‘ _what was all that about?_ ’, but he’s still staring after Dennis with that stupid hangdog expression he’s been wearing ever since they got back from the suburbs. After a few more seconds he seems to come back to himself and turns to Dee with a scowl that doesn’t quite mask the faint pinkish tinge his cheeks have taken on.

“What the fuck are you looking at, bird?” he snaps.

Dee sighs internally. It’s going to be a long day, she thinks. But then, aren’t they all?

\--

“You know, you guys seriously need to kiss and make up already,” she tells Dennis later, when Mac is off hanging out with Charlie somewhere and the two of them are watching some crappy reality show on her couch. “Or at least get the hell out of my apartment, because I’m sick of getting caught in the middle of your shit.”

If you’d asked Dee a month ago, she would have said that Mac and Dennis not speaking could only be a good thing, but the two of them have been driving her crazy, either ignoring each other and treating her like a goddamn messenger pigeon or trading snide jabs that quickly escalate into full-on screaming arguments. And it’s not like it’s unheard of for them to fight, but it’s never been like this before – their blowouts are normally quick, flash-in-the-pan things that only ever last a few hours at most before they’re back to kissing each other’s asses. This simmering tension is something new, and it makes Dee uneasy. She doesn’t like what she can’t predict, and right now it feels like they’re all three of them standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the drop.

“Just drop it, Dee,” Dennis says. He sounds more tired than angry, and Dee doesn’t want to care but he’s been doing better lately, even taking his meds. Dee knows, because she’s the one who ended up taking him back to see the shrink and get his prescription filled the last three times. Dennis hadn’t asked her to, and it’s not something they really talk about, but there’s an unspoken understanding between them all the same.

She still remembers Dennis visiting her on the psych ward after she tried to burn her bitch roommate in college; he’d promised to sneak her out of the hospital, even though it was impossible, just because he knew that plotting her escape would make her smile and take her mind off things. He’d even hugged her, before he left. Much as she hates to admit it, Dennis had gotten her through all that, one of the darkest periods of her life, and she figures she owes it to him to try and return the favor now, as much as he’ll let her. Out of everybody in the gang, she’s the only one who’s really in a position to even try to understand what he’s going through; Mac and Charlie are too dumb to really get it, and Frank didn’t even care when they were kids – he sure as hell couldn’t give a shit now that they’re adults and not even related to him.

Besides which, on a purely selfish level Dee figures that a more stable Dennis can only be a good thing for everybody, herself most of all. Which is why the fact that he’s apparently backsliding has her so concerned.

“Look, not that I care, but whatever’s going on with you and Mac –”

“Jesus Christ, Dee, _enough_ ,” Dennis says. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, okay? I’m so goddamn sick and tired of everything being about Mac all the time. When’s the last time we did something together, just me and you, hmm?”

His voice turns just the tiniest bit seductive for that last part; he leans closer into her space, and Dee feels her heart begin to speed up, a familiar illicit thrill racing up her spine. This isn’t even really about her, she knows – well, maybe it’s a little bit about distracting her from asking any more questions, but it’s mostly to do with the fact that Dennis is still pissed off at Mac for whatever reason, which means he probably hasn’t gotten laid in weeks. Either way, though, Dee doesn’t really give a shit. She’s never been able to say no to this.

Dennis slides a hand up her thigh and she shifts her legs further apart in blatant invitation. They’ll have to make this quick; Mac shouldn’t be back for a while, but it’s still a gamble doing this out here in her goddamn living room.  A foolish one at that, but Dee would be lying if she said there wasn’t a part of her that gets off on the inherent risk involved in banging her brother, the _taboo_ of it all. She’d be willing to bet that the same is true for Dennis.

He grinds the heel of his hand against her crotch before unbuttoning her jeans and sliding the zipper down in one smooth, sure motion. Dee can feel herself starting to get wet already as he teases her through her panties, working her up in record timing. Dennis wasn’t her first, but her first time with him was the first time she really enjoyed sex, the first time she understood just what it was that drove everybody so goddamn crazy for it. Not because the sex itself had been that great technically – it hadn’t, not really, both of them new enough at it to still be fumbling and awkward – but because it was _Dennis,_ and it meant something. Much as they’re both loathe to admit it.

In her worst moments, Dee can’t help but resent him a little for that, for owning so much of her that she’s not even sure she has her own identity outside of him anymore. Then there are other times, times like this, when she’s just grateful he knows her as well as he does.

Dennis finally stops dicking around and slips two fingers into her slick cunt, curling them just right inside of her to send pleasure sparking throughout her entire body, and Dee bites at her lip to stop the moan that threatens to escape, not wanting to stroke his already oversized ego any more than she has to.

“Feel free to join in at any time, by the way,” Dennis says, unbuckling his belt with his other hand.

“Finish me off first, and I might think about it,”

“Always with the sass.” There’s something vaguely affectionate in the way he says it, she thinks, but she gives up on trying to analyze it as he presses his thumb against her clit, making her gasp out loud. Dennis smirks in triumph, but Dee is beyond caring at this point, rocking against his fingers as she seeks out more friction, heat pooling in her belly as she chases after her orgasm.

Dennis starts to move faster, pistoning his fingers in and out of her as best as he can with his hand awkwardly trapped by her jeans. He’s touching himself now, too, running his free hand lazily up and down his cock, and the sight of it almost does Dee in. Dennis always looks his best like this, she thinks; a little bit flustered, a little bit undone.

She comes an instant later, legs trembling, clenching down on Dennis’s fingers as she bites back a whimper. Dennis watches her through it all, eyes dark with lust, and when she comes back to herself, flushed and panting, riding out the aftershocks, he withdraws his hand from inside her jeans, uses the wetness coating his fingers to slick his cock and raises his eyebrows at her expectantly.

Dee almost wants to leave him hanging, just for the hell of it – but a promise is a promise, and besides, with the mood he’s been in lately she’s not entirely positive it wouldn’t push him over the edge if she did. After deliberately dragging it out for a moment to torment him, she takes hold of his dick, feeling its anticipatory twitch against her hand, the heat of him beneath the skin. He’s leaking already, precome beading at the tip, and she thinks that this won’t take long as she jerks him off the way she knows he likes; hard and fast, twisting her wrist on the upstroke.

She cups his balls with her other hand, rolling them in her palm, feeling them draw up tight; reaching back, she zips her finger quick over the smooth patch of skin just behind the sac, and that’s all it takes. Dennis comes with a stifled grunt, shooting over Dee’s hand and his own shirt. It always feels like an accomplishment, somehow, taking him apart like this, and she keeps stroking him through the aftermath until he pushes her away, oversensitive.

She wipes her hand off on his shirt and is maybe more concerned than she should be when Dennis doesn’t protest. Granted, the thing is ruined anyway, but still. From the way he’s staring off into space, she guesses that the sex hasn’t managed to take the edge off whatever weird funk he’s been in for the last few weeks.

“That house was a goddamn nightmare,” he says when Dee is partway through re-fastening her jeans, and it takes her a second to switch gears and realize what he’s talking about. When she does, she’s not actually sure she wants to know – but she’d asked, hadn’t she? She’s honestly kind of surprised that Dennis is even talking to her about it at all, so she says nothing and waits for him to continue his confession.

Dennis sighs and drags his hands through his hair, and when he speaks again his voice is quiet, strained. “I tried, you know? That’s the crazy thing, I really tried to make it work. And Mac was driving me insane, alright, whining on and on about how he was lonely or bored or whatever, so I get him this dog, this stupid cute little mutt to keep him company while I’m at work. And you know what he goes and does, Dee?” Dennis gives a laugh that’s verging on hysterical. “He lets the damn thing starve to death, and then he chops it up and feeds it to me in his goddamn mac and cheese, all because I wasn’t paying him enough attention or whatever. So can you understand why I’m having a little difficulty _moving past it_ this time?”

Dee blinks; whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. And aside from the gratuitous animal cruelty, it doesn’t really sound like Mac’s style, which is maybe the most surprising aspect of Dennis’s story. Mac generally lacks both the patience and the intelligence to pull off that kind of long game; when he’s pissed at someone, he tends to go the more violent and direct route to get his point across, with lots of yelling and throwing things until he inevitably gets distracted and forgets all about it. The kind of calculated vengeance that Dennis is describing sounds more like something that she’d expect from Dennis himself.

“That’s pretty fucked up,” she says after a prolonged silence.

Dennis laughs mirthlessly. “Yeah, you’re telling me. It’s not just that, though; the whole situation was fucked. I really thought I was gonna kill someone. If you guys hadn’t shown up when you did…”

An image comes into Dee’s mind, then: Mac and Dennis standing in the doorway of their fancy suburban home, both of them looking like dead men walking. Dennis clutching a fire poker like he was intent on committing bloody murder with it, staring blankly at Dee and Frank and Charlie stood on the doorstep like they were the last people he expected to see there, despite the fact that the hour of the bet was almost up.

A chill runs down her spine as she recalls the memory, though she doesn’t really know why. Despite the things that Dennis sometimes says, and for all his many flaws, she’s about as certain as she can be that he isn’t actually capable of killing anybody. Sometimes she thinks the only person who’s really scared of Dennis is Dennis, and right now he’s looking to her for reassurance.

_Tell me I’m not bad. Tell me I couldn’t do that._

“In that case, it’s just too bad we didn’t get there a few minutes later,” she says instead. “If you’d killed Mac, he wouldn’t be back in my goddamn apartment.”

Dennis snorts with genuine humor, and just like that, things are almost back to normal.

By the time Mac gets back an hour later, they’re sat a respectable distance apart on the couch, staring at the TV screen like they’ve been watching it this entire time, the very picture of innocence. He doesn’t suspect a thing.

Still, Dennis throws her a tiny wink once his back is turned, and Dee feels a small, hidden thrill somewhere in the vicinity of her chest.

It feels good to have a secret, she thinks, to be included in the joke for once. God knows she’s spent enough time on the outside looking in.

\--

“Yo, Dee, you know where Dennis is?” Mac asks. He’s lounging on her sofa, stuffing his face with Dennis’s Thin Mints; as he speaks, crumbs spray from his mouth to land on his shirt, and Dee feels her lip curl in disgust. She’s just glad that Dennis isn’t here to witness this brazen display of gluttony, lest he feel inspired to start up another cult.

“What am I, his goddamn secretary? He was going out to meet some girl, I think.”

She doesn’t think, she _knows_ , because Dennis had made it a point to tell her about half a dozen times, like he wanted to make her jealous or something. Dee _isn’t_ jealous; Dennis can fuck around with all the girls he likes for all she cares, none of them mean anything to him. Dee’s the only one he keeps coming back to.

Besides, she’s got plans of her own for the evening: she and Artemis are going to hit the new club that’s just opened up, check out the talent. Dee’s actually excited, or as excited as she gets about anything these days; she can’t even remember the last time she spent time alone with Artemis, just the two of them without Frank hanging around being gross. It’s yet another thing that the gang has taken away from her, never mind the fact that she never particularly liked Artemis to begin with.

Mac visibly deflates at the mention of Dennis having a date, and Dee feels something uncomfortably close to pity stirring inside her at the sight. She doesn’t _want_ to feel sorry for Mac, it’s just that he’s so pathetic sometimes it’s difficult not to. Sometimes she thinks the only reason she ever hangs out with him is because he makes her feel like slightly less of a loser by comparison. She might be pushing forty and still clinging desperately to dreams of an acting career that she should have given up on decades ago, but at least she’s not technically homeless and in repressed gay love with a complete psychopath.

_No, you’re just carrying on a secret incestuous affair with the very same psychopath,_ says the voice in her head that always insists on being entirely too honest. _That’s way less pitiful._

Dee tells the voice to shove it.

Still, maybe she is being a little unfair – Mac isn’t _always_ awful. It’s rare, but there are occasions where she actually enjoys his company. They’d had fun together on the slopes, the two of them, dressing up in ridiculous 80s clothes and partying with desperate has-beens while Dennis and Charlie were caught up in their weird little competition. It’s times like those that remind her they were actually real friends, once upon a time. The truth is she’d actually had a bit of a crush on him for a while there in high school, back when he would call her Sweet Dee and sell her drugs.

Of course, that was before she got to know him better and found out what a Grade-A asshole he is ninety-nine percent of the time. It was definitely long before she realized how pathetically in love with her brother he is.

They’d almost slept together one time, a few months after she and Dennis started at Penn – emphasis on the _almost_. Mac was supposed to be visiting Dennis, but Dennis had ditched him to go to some frat party and so he’d ended up hanging around Dee’s dorm room instead, the two of them getting wasted on cheap vodka and bitching about Dennis, and one thing had led to another.

It hadn’t worked out, though; Mac hadn’t been able to get it up, which in hindsight was probably due to the copious amounts of alcohol they’d both consumed, but she’d been so disappointed, so _angry_ that he couldn’t even do this one thing for her that she’d laughed and asked him if he was a fag or something. Mac shot right back, of course, called her a stupid bitch and said it was her fault for being so goddamn ugly, but he’d still begged her not to tell Dennis about it before she kicked him out.

They’ve never talked about it, in all the years that have passed since then. Really, when Dee looks back on it, she’s pretty sure that’s the point at which her relationship with Mac began to deteriorate. They were antagonistic towards each other before then, sure, but it was more like the dynamic she has with Charlie than the weird rivalry that’s been festering between them ever since.

Mac shoves another cookie into his mouth and crumples up the now-empty packet, the sound of it grating on Dee’s last nerve. “If you want Dennis to start speaking to you again, I’m not sure stealing his food is the best way to go about it,” she points out, because sometimes she can’t help herself.

Mac shrugs dejectedly. “He already hates me, I don’t really see how things can get any worse.”

_Oh, for the love of God._ Dee doesn’t know if it’s because she’s getting soft in middle age or if she’s just feeling unexpectedly guilty over fucking Dennis last night while Mac is still out in the cold, but either way, she ends up taking pity on him.

“He doesn’t hate you, asshole,” she says, rolling her eyes. “He’s just really fucking pissed at you right now, which I can’t exactly say I blame him for. Good job on that dog stunt, by the way: it’s not every day that somebody manages to out-psycho my brother, but you pulled it off.”

“He told you about that?” Mac looks vaguely surprised and maybe a little hurt at the prospect of her and Dennis talking about him, which Dee finds more gratifying than she probably should.

“ _Oh,_ yeah.” She fishes her compact mirror out of her purse to check her lipstick, and by the time she looks up again, Mac somehow looks even more miserable than he did before. She blows out a frustrated breath and wonders, not for the first time, how Dennis has managed to live with someone so fucking _needy_ for as long as he has without choking the living daylights out of him.

“You know Dennis. He’ll get over it eventually, but in the meantime, moping around and playing the victim is just gonna wind him up even more.” She bites her lip for a second, deliberating, and then presses on before she can change her mind. “Look, me and Artemis are gonna check out that new club, The Green Room? I guess you can tag along, if you put something decent on and promise not to embarrass me or call me a bird for the rest of the night.”

She really must be getting soft, and a part of her regrets the offer as soon as it’s out of her mouth, but she has to admit it might be kind of fun to watch Mac get wasted and drunkenly hit on beefcakes. She’s pretty sure he’ll turn her down, though, which is mostly why she invited him in the first place – and sure enough, Mac scoffs and waves his hand dismissively, looking more like himself than he has done all night.

“Dee, what in the hell makes you think I’d want to subject myself to a night of watching you try to pretend you’re still relevant by grinding on dudes half your age in some lame-ass club? Because honestly, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.”

Sometimes Dee wonders why she ever bothers even trying to be civil. “Whatever, bitch. Don’t say I didn’t offer. And try not to kill yourself while I’m gone, ‘cause I don’t want to come back to that shit.”

Mac throws the crumpled-up cookie wrapper at her head by way of a response; it misses by about four inches, and Dee flips him off on her way out the door.

Somehow, she finds the whole exchange oddly reassuring.

\--

She ends up getting bored of the club after only a few hours, and bails around the same time as Artemis somehow manages to pick up two guys at once. By the time she stumbles back into the apartment at a little after two, Mac and Dennis are both sat at her kitchen table, heads bent close together, poring over what looks like a plan of some kind spread out in front of them. Dee wonders idly whether this means they’ve made up, and if they have, whether that’s likely to be a good or a bad thing for her.

“What’s up, boners?” she says by way of a greeting as she helps herself to one of the half-empty bottles of beer scattered all around.

“What’s _up?”_ Dennis repeats, with a good deal more contempt than she thinks is really warranted. “What’s _up_ is that my goddamn car got towed, you goddamn bitch!”

There’s a vein bulging in his neck, and Mac pats his knee placatingly as he glares at Dee. She’s not really sure how any of this is her fault, except for the part where apparently everything is. Either way, she guesses this means that Dennis’s date was a bust, which is probably why Mac is looking so fucking pleased with himself.

“Wow, sucks to be you,” she says, taking a long pull of her beer in the vain hope that it’ll push back the hangover she can already feel clawing at the edges of her brain. “So what’s the plan of action?”

Dennis snorts derisively. “Well, I’m not gonna pay the fine, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Still, Dee’s sure that he must be plotting _something._ He loves that stupid car, as evidenced by the fact that he’s been driving it for the last twenty years. Technically that makes it one of the longest relationships he’s ever had, outside of the gang, and she’d be willing to bet that he’d sell any one of them out for the damn Range Rover in a heartbeat.

“We’re planning a heist,” Mac butts in excitedly, confirming her suspicions.

“A _heist,_ huh?” Dee says in her best condescending tone. Still, she sinks down into the sole unoccupied chair and lets them explain the plan to her; she even listens to some of it, tuning in and out as they talk over one another, voices overlapping. She’s a little fuzzy on some of the details by the time they’re done, but she figures they’ll end up doing a lot of improvising as they go along anyway, the way they do with most of their plans.

“So now we just need to get Frank and Charlie on board,” Dennis says in summation, indicating that the presentation part of proceedings is over.

“Charlie won’t be a problem, dude,” Mac says. “You know he’s pretty much instantly on board with anything that involves dressing up in costume.”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure Frank doesn’t even know what’s going on half the time these days, so he shouldn’t take much convincing,” Dennis mutters absently. “Now, are you sure you can handle climbing the fence?” he adds, turning to Mac. Dee nearly does a double-take; apparently she’d missing that part of the brief, but regardless, she’s almost certain that Mac _can’t_ handle it. The fact that Dennis evidently thinks he might be able to is unexpected to say the least.

“Bro, I got this,” Mac says, puffing his chest out slightly. Dee rolls her eyes, but they both ignore her.

“Good.” Dennis places his hand on top of Mac’s where it’s still resting on his knee. It’s a move that looks casual, almost unconscious, but Dee knows her brother well enough to know that it’s an entirely calculated play.

Mac goes very, very still. Dee pretends not to notice, downing the rest of her beer in silence.

\--

In spite of everything, they manage to pull off their plan and succeed in rescuing the Range Rover from its prison at the impound lot. Dennis is in a ridiculously good mood when they return to the apartment, and Dee can’t help but get caught up in it when he’s feeling magnanimous like this, especially when it means he acts as though he actually _likes_ her rather than shitting on her the way he usually does.

She has no idea where Mac is, and she doesn’t much care. She figures he’s probably off sulking somewhere after Frank yelled at him, but either way, he’s pretty much the furthest thing from her mind as Dennis tugs her down into his lap, making his intentions more than clear. She’s riding the same high as Dennis is, and she feels invincible, like nothing can possibly go wrong for them as long as they have each other.

“We are fucking _good,”_ she says, pulling her t-shirt over her head in one fluid motion as Dennis fumbles with his own shirt buttons, fingers slipping on the tiny plastic discs in his haste.

“Fuck yeah, babygirl.” He grins up at her and Dee feels her heart stutter in her chest, just a little. She’d die before admitting it, but getting Dennis to look at her like that is one of her favorite things in the world. She rolls her hips in a slow, lazy circle against him, and Dennis moans a little in response as he finally finishes messing around with his shirt and shrugs it off impatiently.

Dee unbuckles his belt with shaking fingers as he thumbs at her nipple through the thin material of her bra, causing her to gasp and arch her head back with how fucking good it feels. It’s always like this with Dennis; all her senses amplified, everything turned up to eleven. He’s learned her so goddamn well over the years, and he _knows_ it, the bastard.

Fortunately, the reverse is also true; Dee knows exactly which of Dennis’s buttons to push to drive him wild, and she draws his already hard cock out of his pants, keeping her touch light enough to tease and infuriate as she strokes him. Sure enough, Dennis bucks up into her hand, a needy, frustrated whine escaping him.

“Goddammit, Dee, quit teasing and get on with already,” he says, and Dee can’t help but smirk because he’s so fucking _easy._ Still, she capitulates, raising up enough to shimmy out of her pants and underwear. She unhooks her bra before climbing back into his lap, and Dennis watches it all with hungry eyes, drinking her in. Dee basks under his attention, unable to even pretend that it doesn’t light her up from the inside out. It’s like a drug, and she’s well and truly hooked.

“Much better,” Dennis says, reaching for her. His hands spanning her ribcage make her feel feminine and delicate the way she almost never does. It unsettles her, makes her too vulnerable somehow, and she takes hold of his dick again to put herself back in control; jacking him properly this time, sliding her thumb through the slick of precome that’s starting to gather at the head.

They’ve never bothered much with condoms – which is maybe stupid of them, but Dee’s been on the pill since she was eighteen years old apart from that one time with the whole surrogacy thing, and as far as she knows they’re both clean. When she sinks down onto Dennis it’s indescribable; it’s been such a long time since they did this that she’d almost forgotten how perfect it feels, the pair of them fitting together like two halves of the same whole, like this is how they were always meant to be.

Dennis groans from somewhere deep in his chest and sinks his fingers into her hips as she begins to move on him, setting the pace hard and fast. It’s obscene; the sound of flesh slapping against flesh filling the room, the scent of sex overpowering. Dennis clutches her closer, tugging her nipple between his teeth before soothing it with his tongue, and Dee is lost.

So lost, in fact, that it takes her a second to register the sound of her front door opening, and by the time she does it’s much too late. Dennis goes perfectly, terrifyingly still under her at the same time as she becomes aware of another presence in the room, and she raises her head from where it’s fallen forward against Dennis’s shoulder to see Mac stood in the doorway, staring right at them. The expression on his face would almost be comical under any other circumstances: his mouth open in a perfect round O, eyes practically bugging out of his head. As it is, Dee thinks she’s about as far away from laughing as she’s ever been in her life.

Stupid, they’ve been so _goddamn_ stupid she can’t believe it. She should say something, she thinks, _do_ something, at least cover herself up, but it’s like the three of them are stuck in some frozen tableau, the seconds ticking by with agonizing slowness as they all gape at each other, waiting for a punchline that isn’t coming.

“Whoops,” she says once the silence becomes unbearable, and just like that, time seems to renew its normal pace again. Mac closes his jaw with an audible _snap_ , then turns and storms right back out of the apartment, not even bothering to close the door behind him. Dennis curses, shoving Dee roughly off of his lap and hurriedly fastening his pants as he chases Mac out into the hallway, leaving Dee alone and unsatisfied on her couch as she tries to process what just happened.

“Mac, wait!” Dennis calls out pathetically. “It’s not what it looks like, I swear.”

Dee has to roll her eyes at that one, and sure enough, she hears Mac’s incredulous snort from outside a second later. “Really? ‘Cause it sure as hell _looked_ like you were banging your sister back there. I mean, what the hell, Dennis? That’s like, McPoyle levels of fucked up.”

Dee cringes, both at the comparison and at Mac’s volume, which has been steadily rising throughout his tirade. She wishes the two of them would have this conversation somewhere else other than right outside her goddamn apartment, because she could do without all of her neighbors getting an insight into her twisted sex life, thanks very much.

“You did not just compare me to those inbred lunatics,” Dennis says, and now he sounds angry too. Mac still isn’t done, though, raising his voice even louder to talk over him.

“I mean, if she was hot then maybe I could understand it, but she’s – _Dee._ I mean, of all the girls, Dennis, why her?”

“She satisfies my needs.”

It hurts Dee more than she would have expected to hear Dennis so callously dismiss what they have, even though she knows it’s not the truth. Not the whole truth, at any rate. Dennis needs her alright, needs her constant validation; his ego is so goddamn fragile that it would destroy him if she walked away from this, never mind that she’s no more capable of doing so than he is.

“Oh, and I don’t?” Mac sounds almost as crushed as she feels. _Good._

“I have a lot of needs,” Dennis says simply. Mac scoffs in apparent disbelief, and Dee can just picture the half-wounded, half-indignant expression that he’s more than likely wearing. He never was any good at hiding his emotions.

“You are such a piece of shit, dude. You know, you’ve had me _groveling_ to you for _weeks_ now, and all that time you’ve been… Whatever, man. I’m outta here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mac. Where the fuck are you gonna go?”

“Right now? To get very, very drunk. I’ll be back later to get my shit, and then I guess I’ll go stay at Charlie’s.”

“Goddammit, Mac, stop being such a little bitch about this!” Dennis yells, but Mac is apparently done talking; Dee can hear his footsteps retreating all the way down the corridor. After a few more tense seconds, Dennis marches back into the apartment, slamming the door behind him with enough force to make the walls shake.

“Put your fucking clothes on, Dee,” he snaps without looking at her, bending to snatch his discarded shirt up from the sofa cushions. He makes a beeline straight for the bathroom, the metallic click of the lock sliding into place an unmistakable signal for her to leave him the fuck alone if she knows what’s good for her.

He needn’t have bothered. Dee stays where she is for a long time, counting the stains on her carpet and fighting the inappropriate urge to laugh hysterically at the fact that their secret of twenty years is finally out.

\--

True to his word, Mac returns to the apartment later that evening to collect his things. He reeks of booze, but otherwise seems more or less sober – not that that’s saying much. They’ve all been functioning alcoholics for a while now.

“Not interrupting anything, am I?” he sneers when he steps inside. Mac is never more infuriating than when he thinks he’s in the right about something, but Dee can’t exactly blame him for freaking out about this particular revelation. Somehow that just makes the whole situation that much worse.

Dennis has since surfaced from his self-imposed solitude, but he doesn’t attempt to say anything as he watches Mac move from room to room, stuffing his few meager possessions into a battered duffel bag. A weird, brittle tension permeates the entire apartment, and after a while Dee feels compelled to at least _try_ to fix this mess, if for no other reason than to save her own skin. Bad enough that Mac knows about her and Dennis now, but she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he decided to blab to Frank and Charlie about it too.

“Look, can we at least try to talk about this like rational adults?” she asks, positioning herself directly in between Mac and the front door, effectively blocking off his escape route.

“I have nothing to say to you, Dee,” Mac says tiredly. “Get the fuck out of my way.”

The _make me_ is on the tip of Dee’s tongue, but her instinct for self-preservation tells her to hold it back for once. She’s never been scared of Mac – mostly because everybody knows that he’s a giant pussy – but she suddenly finds herself aware of how much _bigger_ than her he is, biceps bulging menacingly as he clenches his jaw in irritation. Over the twenty-odd years that she’s known him he’s had few qualms about getting physically violent with her, and she certainly wouldn’t put it past him to sock her in the face just on principle if she pushes him much further. With a frustrated sigh, she steps aside to let him pass.

The apartment feels oddly empty once he’s left again, the weight of his absence filling the space like a living thing. It pisses Dee off, because she hadn’t even wanted him to move in with her in the first place. She doesn’t even _like_ Mac most days; she should be glad to see the back of him. It’s just that she’s having a little trouble counting this as a victory when Dennis looks so defeated and there’s a hollow sense of dread creeping up her own spine. Like this was just a test run, and the real explosion is right around the corner.

“Did you plan this?” Dennis asks as they’re getting into bed, and Dee is so taken aback by the question that it takes her a while to come up with a suitable response. Honestly, she’d been wondering whether Dennis had orchestrated the whole thing – on some subconscious level if not deliberately – to punish Mac or Dee or himself. It would be far from the craziest thing he’s ever done.

“What _possible_ reason could I have for doing that? You think I want _Mac_ to know that we’ve been – what we’ve been doing?”

“Shit, Dee, I don’t know. Maybe you just wanted Mac out of the apartment so you could have me all to yourself. You never wanted him here in the first place.”

Dee stares at him in frank disbelief. “Are you even hearing yourself right now? If you remember, I didn’t want _you_ living here either, but it looks like I’m still stuck with your sorry ass.” She sucks in a deep breath, forcing herself to try and be the rational one here, since Dennis sure as shit won’t be. “Look, maybe this doesn’t have to be such a bad thing. At least it’s all out in the open now.”

“And you think that’s a _good_ thing? Jesus Christ, Dee, have you lost your goddamn mind? You know he’s gonna rat us out, right? This is Mac we’re talking about, I’d be surprised if half of Philadelphia doesn’t know already.”

“He wouldn’t dare. Not if he doesn’t want everyone to find out how totally gay he is for you.” Everybody knows that already, of course, but Mac wears his denial like a shield, and right now Dee is hoping against hope that the threat of having his own dirty little secret made public will be enough incentive for him to keep his mouth shut.

Dennis is silent, rolling over on his side to face away from her. The space yawns wide between them; Dee’s left side is oddly cold where Mac should be radiating heat like a goddamn furnace, and for the first time since the bed made its way into their lives the thing feels entirely too big.

“He’ll come back, once he’s had some time to cool down,” she says into the darkness of the room. “You know he’s obsessed with you; he won’t be able to stay away for long.”

She’s not entirely sure which one of them she’s trying to convince.


	2. mac

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who commented/left kudos on the first part! I was kind of unsure about how well-received this concept would be, so I really appreciate the feedback.
> 
> Additional warnings in this chapter for mild violence, dissociation/blackouts, mention of past self-harm, mind games, internalized homophobia and recreational drug use.

**02\. mac**

He can’t get the image out of his head, no matter how much he tries. Every time he closes his eyes it’s there, the whole scene playing out before him again in high definition: Dee bouncing up and down on her brother’s cock; the way Dennis’s expression had shifted from blissed-out to panicked in record time as he realized they’d been found out.

It makes him feel sick, and betrayed in a way that he’s never felt before, and somehow the very worst part is that he’s maybe not as surprised as he should be. There were always rumors in high school – the word “twincest” got bandied about a lot – but Mac had mostly ignored them. It was high school, after all – there were rumors circulating about pretty much _everybody_ at one point or another. Dennis and Dee, Mac and Dennis, Mac and Charlie; hell, he’s pretty sure there was a story going around about Charlie and Cricket for a while at the beginning of senior year. But in this instance, apparently, the St. Joe’s gossip mill had been dead on the money.

It makes a twisted sort of sense, really; Dennis and Dee have always had their weird bond going on, no matter how much they might claim to hate each other ninety percent of the time. Mac isn’t sure whether it’s a twin thing or a Dennis-and-Dee thing, just that whenever the two of them decide to team up together they each become ten times more unbearable than they ever are individually.

He ends up crashing at Charlie and Frank’s that first night, feeds them both some half-assed line about Dee getting on his nerves too much to stay at her place any longer. He’s not really sure why he doesn’t just tell them the truth, except for the fact that he’s pretty sure that’s exactly what Dennis and Dee are expecting him to do. It’s what he does, after all; once a rat, always a rat, but he doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction of being right about him.

Well, that, and there’s also the fact that they each have more than enough dirt on him to make his life even more miserable if they really wanted to. It would be nothing for Dennis to tell everyone they know exactly how many times he’s fucked Mac within an inch of his life, and Dee is still sitting on their embarrassing drunken fumble from way back when, probably waiting for the most opportune moment to blackmail him with it.

“I don’t know if I can sanction this,” Frank says when Mac shows up on the doorstep with what few belongings he owns. “It’s violating the terms of the bet.”

“Oh, screw you and your goddamn bet, Frank!” Mac snaps. “I’m not violating anything, okay? I’ll still be sharing a bed with an old man, because I’ll be sharing it with _you._ ”

He’s not in the mood for this bullshit. If it wasn’t for Frank and his stupid bet, they probably wouldn’t even be in this mess. There wouldn’t have been so much pressure on him and Dennis to make things work in the suburbs, and maybe they’d still be there now, alone in that big house with no Dee around to bother them. Mac would have taken better care of the dog, and learned how to cook dishes that would actually impress Dennis, and everything would’ve been perfect.

Frank raises his eyebrows. “Fine, but no funny business, okay? I don’t want any of your weird shit.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mac says – although he’s pretty sure he can guess, especially after the way Frank had yelled at him during the whole thing with Dennis’s car. More and more lately, it feels as though the joke’s always on him, like the rest of the gang are in on some big secret he’s not privy to, and he’s sick of it. He just wants things to go back to the way they used to be.

Frank doesn’t bother to reply, just gives him a singularly unimpressed look before he climbs into the bed. After a slightly tense pause, Charlie follows suit, patting Mac’s shoulder sympathetically on the way past.

In the end, Mac winds up hanging off the very edge of the filthy futon, trying to block out the sound of Frank’s snoring and the symphony of alley cats yowling outside the windows. He’d refused to eat the cat food – he still has his pride, for what little it’s worth – and he ends up managing maybe an hour’s worth of sleep the entire night. When he finally succumbs to sheer exhaustion, he dreams that he’s watching Dennis and Dee from behind the bars of a prison cell. They’re laughing at him as they fuck, cruel and beautiful and untouchable.

The next night, he decides to cut his losses and sleep in the back office at Paddy’s.

It’s more difficult to ignore Dennis at work, but he gives it his best shot anyway, only speaking to him when strictly necessary and spending most of his time with Charlie. He catches Dennis staring at him more than once, but he always looks away whenever their eyes catch, and otherwise he acts as though it’s business as usual.

All in all, Mac is so focused on avoiding Dennis that he fails to pay much attention to the other half of the equation, and Dee manages to ambush him in the basement when he goes down to change the keg.

“So when are you gonna get over this little temper tantrum you’ve got going on?” she asks. “It was cute to begin with, but it’s getting kind of old.”

Somehow Mac’s superior senses fail him – probably due to all the stress he’s under – and he doesn’t hear her approach, almost dropping the keg in surprise. He curses under his breath and sets it down gingerly, willing his heart rate to slow before he whirls around to face her.

“Don’t tell me you’re not glad to get rid of me. Now the two of you have that whole big bed all to yourselves.”

Dee rolls her eyes. “You’re being such a big baby about this whole thing, you know. Can’t you just move past it?”

“No, Dee, I can’t _move past it,_ ” Mac hisses. “You are _fucking_ your _brother._ That’s, like, so many different sins I don’t even know where to start.” He’s pretty sure it is, anyway. He needs to brush up on what the Bible has to say about incest, but either way, he’s fairly certain he has the moral high ground here.

Dee narrows her eyes and takes several steps forward until she’s right up in his face. “You can keep up the high and mighty act all you want, but we both know the real reason you’re pissed is that Dennis is fucking somebody else, and you can’t stand it.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Mac says, in what he hopes is a menacing tone of voice. The truth is, her words couldn’t have been more effective if she’d slapped him in the face with them, because _she knows_ – about him and Dennis, what they’ve been doing _._ Before he can stop himself, he pictures Dennis telling her all about it, the two of them lying naked in bed together and mocking him behind his back. He should have known he could rely on Dee to make him feel even worse, when just this morning he hadn’t even thought that was possible.

Either way, he doesn’t want to consider the possibility that she might be right, about what his real issue is with this whole mess. He barges past her before she can get in his head any more than she already has, taking the stairs back up to the bar two at a time and leaving the keg behind in his haste to get away from her.

Dee can carry it up herself, he reasons. Really, it’s the least she owes him.

**\--**

The Rainbow is bright and loud, the exact opposite of Paddy’s in almost every conceivable way. The shamrocks and green decorations scattered haphazardly over available surface, at least, lend a modicum of familiarity to the setting, but Mac still has no idea what he’s really doing here. He’d just needed to get away from the madness of the bar and Charlie’s weird leprechaun thing; he does the exact same thing every year, but the possibility that he might have been onto something all this time is seriously messing with Mac’s head.

The truth is he’s been past this place before, more often than he cares to think about; he’s even been inside a few times, but he always ends up losing his nerve and leaving after a few minutes. Tonight, though, tonight feels different. He doesn’t know if it’s the holiday or just all the bullshit of the past few months finally getting to him, but Mac’s feeling bold; like he might just do something a little bit crazy, a little bit reckless.

“What are you drinking?” says a voice to his left, jerking him out of his reverie. The man leaning on the bar beside him is younger than Mac, probably late twenties, but he’s not some skinny twink; built like a linebacker, all broad shoulders and bulging pecs that Mac lets his eyes linger on just a second too long.

The kid doesn’t look a thing like Dennis, but something about him reminds Mac of Dennis anyway; the tightly curled hair, maybe, or the smirk playing about the corners of his mouth. Mac almost waves him off, but changes his mind at the last second and asks for a beer instead. Maybe this is exactly what he needs, to get laid by somebody other than Dennis, some meaningless, anonymous fuck to take his mind off the trainwreck that his life has become.

Five minutes later finds him crowded up against the door of a filthy club bathroom – the only part of The Rainbow that isn’t sparklingly clean, apparently – with another man’s tongue halfway down his throat. They haven’t even exchanged names, which suits Mac just fine; he isn’t looking to get married here, he just needs a distraction, something to chase Dennis out of his head for five goddamn minutes. The kid pulls back, and up close Mac can tell that he’s covered in some kind of green glittery stuff that’s going to end up all over him. He asks if Mac is okay, like Mac isn’t a decade his senior, like he knows that this isn’t something Mac does. It pisses Mac off, so he fumbles impatiently at the fastening of the other man’s tight jeans and pushes his hand inside.

It occurs to him that this is the first time he’s had his hand on a dick that wasn’t his own or Dennis’s – and goddammit, he really needs to stop thinking about Dennis – but it doesn’t matter, he knows what he’s doing. The kid doesn’t seem to have any complaints, at any rate, panting and thrusting erratically into his hand. Mac’s head is swimming, and he can’t exactly blame it on the beer he’d hardly touched.

He wipes his sticky hand off on his own shirt afterwards, and ends up melting back against the flimsy door of the cubicle as the kid returns the favor, working him up to the edge with firm, confident strokes. It’s not the same electric feeling he gets when Dennis touches him like this, but it still feels good, infinitely better than fucking Margaret McPoyle in the courthouse last week had been, and Mac realizes that a part of him had been hoping it wouldn’t be, so that he could go on thinking that it was purely a Dennis thing and not something wrong with _him._

As soon as he exits this stall and gets back to reality, he knows, the shame and the guilt will come, but for now he just closes his eyes and forces himself to stop thinking, getting lost in the sensations instead. He never has to tell anybody that this happened, and as long as he doesn’t talk about it then maybe it won’t have. Denial’s worked pretty well for him so far, after all.

Dennis, of course, has other plans.

“You know you reek like sex, by the way,” he informs Mac later, after they’ve dumped the leprechaun by the side of the road. The others have all gone home, but Dennis had made up some bullshit excuse to come back to the bar, and since that’s also where Mac is sleeping these days, it means they’re alone together for the first time in what feels like forever.

“Excuse me?”

“What, did you actually think that no-one would notice?” Dennis sneers. “Like you didn’t just fuck some twink at The Rainbow. You might as well have a giant flashing sign above your head.”

Mac is pretty sure that the peculiar harsh tone his voice has taken on means that Dennis is jealous, and the part of him that isn’t mortified and furious at being so transparent is maybe a tiny bit pleased.

“No, Dennis, for your information I did not ‘fuck some twink’. Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”

“Right, not your type,” Dennis fires back without missing a beat. “So it was some big, ripped beefcake then, and I’m guessing he fucked you. I know how much you love a cock up your ass.”

“Jesus Christ, Dennis!” Mac hisses, looking around guiltily even though there’s nobody else present to hear them. His face feels hot and he can’t think straight, and he hates that Dennis can still do this to him, after everything. “Nobody fucked anyone, alright? We just… made out a bit, that’s all.”

He’s hoping that that slight concession will be enough, that Dennis will fuck off so he can wash all this glitter and crap off him and get some goddamn sleep, but no such luck.

“Bullshit. If all you did was make out, why’d you need the towels?”

“Well, there might’ve been some hand stuff too.” He mimes jacking off, willing himself not to blush or look away. He doesn’t want to give Dennis the satisfaction.

“ _Hand stuff_ ,” Dennis echoes mockingly. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? All those years I spent listening to your self-righteous, hypocritical _bullshit_ , and I always bit my tongue, didn’t say a word because God forbid we do anything that could hurt Mac’s precious _feelings._ And then all of a sudden you just, what, decide to go out and exchange drunken handjobs with the first guy who offers? I mean, what the hell, Mac?”

Mac doesn’t really have an answer for that, and certainly not one that Dennis would want to hear. Dennis isn’t done, though, and when Mac doesn’t say anything he presses further, going right for the jugular.

“So how was it, then? Your first time as an out and proud gay man. We should throw a party.”

Mac flinches before he can stop himself. “I’m not –”

“You still can’t admit it, can you?” Dennis scoffs. “Even after you _literally_ just went to a gay bar and jerked another man off. Christ, you’re pathetic.”

“I’m pathetic? _I’m_ pathetic?! At least I’m not so hard-up I have to resort to fucking my own sister!”

For a fraction of a second, Dennis actually looks wounded, and Mac almost wants to take it back. Then the mask slides smoothly back into place over Dennis’s features as though it had never been gone; his eyes go hard and flinty, and Mac braces himself for whatever’s coming next.

“You know, say what you like about Dee, but she gets me off better than you ever did.”

“Bullshit,” Mac says, taking a step forward into Dennis’s space. He knows, on some level, that Dennis is deliberately trying to push his buttons, appealing to his competitive nature and his rivalry with Dee to get a rise out of him. The trouble is, it’s working; he can feel the rage building inside him already, heady and familiar.

“I mean, we _are_ twins, after all,” Dennis forges on, relentless. “Dee is my other half, the yin to my yang, if you will. We’re _literally_ the same flesh and blood; she knows me better than anybody. Come on, Mac, even you must know you never had a chance of competing with that.”

“That is _bullshit!_ ” Mac yells again, crowding Dennis up against the wall, rage clouding his vision until he can barely think straight. He wants to wrap his hands around Dennis’s throat, hurt him, make him bleed; shatter that unflappable exterior and get him to _feel_ something for once in his goddamn life. “Dee is _nothing_ , I could take her any day.”

“Go on, then,” Dennis says. “Prove it, asshole. Unless you’re too scared, that is.”

He makes it sound like a challenge, his eyes dancing with it, and Mac has never been one to back down from a dare. Least of all one issued by Dennis. Before he can think about all the reasons why it’s a terrible idea, he reaches for Dennis’s fly, yanks the zipper down and shoves his hand inside. Dennis is commando underneath his jeans, and it only takes a couple of pulls to get him hard, but other than that he looks irritatingly unaffected. Bored, even.

Fortunately, Mac is only just getting started.

He sinks to his knees with the intent of giving Dennis the best goddamn blowjob he’s ever had, just to let him know exactly what he’s been missing out on since he decided to go and fuck everything up between them. Leaning forwards, he licks a broad stripe along the full length of Dennis’s cock, wraps his hand around the shaft and gives it a few more strokes for good measure before he closes his lips around the head. Above him, Dennis grunts in pleasure, and Mac doesn’t let it show on his face but he smiles internally, gripping Dennis’s hip with his free hand to prevent him from thrusting before taking him all the way down.

It’s been a while, sure, but this is something he knows how to do. Dennis is a goddamn liar; there’s no fucking way Dee is better at this than he is, he doesn’t care how many different guys she’s sucked off over the years. There’s only one that matters, and Mac has detailed, intimate knowledge on exactly what makes him tick.

“Yeah, just like that, bitch,” Dennis mutters breathlessly. “I knew you needed this.” He threads his fingers through Mac’s hair in a grip that’s just shy of painful, and all of a sudden it occurs to Mac that he’s played right into Dennis’s hands, given him exactly what he wanted. He isn’t the one in control, here; he isn’t winning whatever sick game they’re playing. He’s not even close.

Well, fuck that. Mac pulls off abruptly, sits back on his haunches and makes a show of wiping his mouth on the back of his hand as Dennis sputters in outrage.

“What the _fuck?”_

“Maybe you should get Dee to take care of that for you,” Mac says, standing up to watch Dennis’s face as it sinks in. “Oh, wait, she’s not here. Too bad.”

“Stop playing around, Mac, I swear to God,” Dennis snarls. He looks livid, like he wants to tear Mac’s throat out right then and there – and maybe Mac should be afraid, but he’s not. The truth is, Dennis has never scared him. He’s scared of a lot of things, more than he’d like to admit to, but Dennis has never been one of them. Maybe that speaks to his lack of self-preservation instinct, or maybe it just means that he really is as stupid as Dennis always says he is; either way, there’s a part of Mac that will always see Dennis as the punk-ass rich kid who wore makeup to school and bought drugs from him after homeroom. It’s difficult to be scared of _anybody_ when you’ve known them for that long.

Well, that, and there’s also the fact that even Dennis has a hard time looking intimidating with his dick hanging out of his pants, hard and leaking and pitifully neglected.

“I’m not playing,” Mac says simply. “I’m done.”

“That’s – you’re _done?_ What does that even mean? _I’m_ not done!” Dennis stutters. He sounds a hair away from desperate, and it takes every ounce of willpower that Mac possesses not to give in. “You don’t walk away from me!”

“Yeah? Watch me.”

“You’re just proving my point, you know!” Dennis calls after him as he turns away and walks to the back office. “At least Dee finishes the job!”

Mac grits his teeth and forces himself not to rise to the bait as he locks himself in the safety of the office and listens to Dennis still ranting and raving on the other side of the door.

Somehow ignoring him doesn’t feel as satisfying as Mac had hoped it would.

\--

It’s almost eleven pm and he’s watching old cartoons in Charlie’s filthy apartment, getting high on glue just like the good old days when his phone rings for the third time in twenty minutes.

“You gonna answer that, dude?” Charlie asks.

Mac rolls his eyes but digs his cell out of his pocket nonetheless. He’s pretty sure it’s Dennis – who else would be obsessively calling him at this time of night? – and so he ends up squinting at the display in confusion when it informs him that he has three missed calls from ‘Big Bird’. She so rarely contacts him directly that it takes him a second to remember that that’s what he saved Dee as in his phone, and he’s still snickering at his own cleverness when a text comes through:

_Something wrong with Dennis. Get here NOW._

Mac is pretty sure he’s never sobered up faster in his life, despite the fact that his tolerance for anything stronger than weed is down to almost nothing since he rarely uses these days. Somewhere in the ugliest, pettiest corner of his mind, he wants to ignore the message just for the sake of spiting Dennis – and Dee, for that matter – but the rest of him is already halfway out the door, offering vague excuses to Charlie before he practically runs the few blocks to Dee’s apartment.

“Took you long enough,” Dee snaps when she opens the door to let him in, but the slight tremor in her voice belies her tone. Her hair is a mess and there are deep shadows under her eyes, but Mac isn’t there for her and he pushes his way past her into the apartment.

“So what’s the big emergency?”

Dee trails after him, biting anxiously at a hangnail. “I don’t know, exactly. He’s locked himself in the bathroom and he won’t talk to me.”

Standing outside the bathroom he can hear Dennis, pacing back and forth and muttering to himself, but there’s no reply when he knocks on the door.

“Dennis? It’s Mac, can you let me in?”

Nothing. He looks at Dee, who shrugs helplessly in response. Only one thing for it, then: Mac takes a deep breath, braces himself, and rams his shoulder into the door.

“Hey, what the fuck are you doing?!” Dee yells.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you have a better idea?”

“Fine, but you’re paying for the damages, asshole,” she scowls. Mac rolls his eyes and rams the door again. Thankfully it’s only cheap plywood, and it gives way after the fourth attempt, swinging open to reveal the disaster area that is Dee’s bathroom. The mirror is completely shattered, shards of glass scattered all over the floor, and in the midst of all the carnage is Dennis, wild eyed and bloody knuckled, still ranting to himself and apparently oblivious to their sudden entrance.

“Jesus Christ, Den.”

“You so owe me a new mirror,” Dee says shakily. Mac ignores her, carefully picking his way through the room, approaching Dennis like he would a stray dog.

“Hey, Dennis, you in there, buddy? You’re kinda freaking me out here.”

Dennis still doesn’t react, muttering nonsense under his breath, vague threats that Mac has heard a dozen times before – _who does she think she is, how dare she talk to me like that, I’ll show her, I’ll show them all_ – and that’s when he makes his first mistake, laying a tentative hand on Dennis’s shoulder. It’s like that old myth about how you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker; startling Dennis when he’s like this is never a good idea, and he lashes out blindly, his fist connecting with Mac’s cheekbone.

Thankfully it’s only a glancing blow, directionless and lacking Dennis’s full strength behind it, but it still hurts like a bitch. Mac can feel a wet smear against his cheek where Dennis’s blood has transferred to his own skin, and Dennis is still freaking out, flailing wildly and spitting curses. Mac does the only thing he can think of, grabbing his wrists and holding on tightly. The birdlike bones feel shockingly delicate in his fists, like he could snap them without a second thought.

“Goddammit, Dennis, it’s me! Would you calm the fuck down?”

“Get your fucking hands off me,” Dennis says, still struggling in Mac’s grip. Mac tries not to take it personally; he’s pretty sure Dennis isn’t even seeing him at all, if his blank stare is anything to go by. He’s learned from long experience that the only way of dealing with Dennis when he’s like this is to immobilize him somehow, take away his control until he stops struggling and submits. He draws Dennis closer, holding him tight against his body, and after a few more long, painful moments the fight goes out of him and he slumps forward into Mac’s chest, breathing heavily.

“Holy shit,” Dee says. Mac had mostly kind of forgotten she was still there, but he pays her no attention as he leads Dennis over to the sink. Dennis is quiet and oddly pliant, clearly still lost in some other place in his mind as Mac rinses the blood from his ruined knuckles, tries to assess the damage in the dim light of the bathroom.

“How bad is it?” Dee asks, hovering over his shoulder.

“What, am I a goddamn doctor now?” Mac snaps. It doesn’t look too bad to his untrained eye, and he sends up a silent prayer that they can avoid a trip to the emergency room.

“Let me see,” Dee says, muscling in closer, and Mac moves aside with a sweeping _be my guest_ gesture as she takes Dennis’s hands in her own, inspecting them closely. There’s a care to the way she handles him, a tenderness that Mac has rarely seen from her before, and it makes him want to avert his eyes.

“It looks okay,” she concludes finally, agreeing with Mac’s assessment. “There’s still some glass in there, but I don’t think he needs any stitches.” Mac glances at her, intrigued despite himself, and she anticipates his question before he even opens his mouth. “Sometimes, when we were kids, we’d – hurt ourselves. On purpose. Mom didn’t give a shit, and Frank was never around, so we’d patch each other up most of the time.”

Mac has no idea why she’d willingly hand over that information, ammunition that he could use against her. It feels like a peace offering, maybe.

“Yeah, so what? I used to get high and punch the walls in my mom’s house whenever I got really mad,” he says after a long pause, just so that they’re even, so they’ve each got dirt on the other. _Mutually assured destruction_. He’s not entirely sure what that means, but he remembers hearing it in some documentary about the Cold War, and it had sounded cool enough to stick with him.

In this particular analogy, Dee is definitely Russia.

Dee smiles ruefully. “I know. I remember you always used to come into school with busted-up hands.” She shakes her head. “God, we were a fucked up bunch of kids.”

“Yeah, some things don’t change,” Mac says, casting a significant glance at Dennis. He sways a little, looking dead on his feet, and Mac takes one of his arms to steady him as Dee turns the taps off. He doesn’t quite know what to do with this shaky camaraderie that seems to be developing between them, but things definitely go a lot smoother when they’re working together rather than against each other.

Once they’ve finished cleaning and drying Dennis’s wounds and gotten him into bed, Dee gestures for Mac to follow her out to the living room. He kind of wants to ignore her just to be difficult, but he can’t guarantee that if he does she won’t just start chirping away at him anyway, and he really doesn’t want Dennis to wake up again. He’d been asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, succumbing to the exhaustion the way he always does after a big blowup. He looks almost peaceful, curled up in the middle of the stupid bed that’s caused them all so much trouble.

Dee hands him a beer and a wet cloth to wipe Dennis’s blood from his face as he reluctantly trails her into the other room, sinking down on the couch. “Thanks for coming over,” she says. It’s not really like he had much of a choice, but he’s too tired to argue and he just grunts in acknowledgement, taking a long pull from his bottle.

“What the hell happened?” he asks eventually.

Dee shrugs. “I’m not sure. From what he was ranting about before you got here, I’m guessing some girl called him old or creepy or some shit. The usual.”

_Sounds about right._ “I thought he was getting better, you know,” Dee adds, apropos of nothing. “I think he’s off his meds again. I mean, he was actually taking them for a while – I even went with him to see the doctor the last few times, but now…”

She trails off, letting the sentence hang in the air, and Mac can’t shake the uneasy guilt gnawing at his gut. He can’t help wondering if this is _his_ fault, if it’s because he left, even though he knows that it’s probably irrational. If not this, something else would have happened to trigger a relapse eventually.

Still, he can’t help feeling responsible. Mac knows better than anybody just how fragile Dennis can be; it’s just easy to forget sometimes, when Dennis devotes so much energy to making his life a living hell.

“Look, this whole thing with me and Dennis –” Dee starts.

“I don’t wanna hear about it, okay?” Mac interrupts before she can get any further. He doesn’t want to know about their weird, incestuous _whatever._ He wishes he could forget what he’s already seen; he was perfectly happy with being in the dark about this whole thing.

Unfortunately, Dee is as relentless as her brother when she wants to be, and she carries on as if he hasn’t even spoken. “I’m just saying. I know – _we_ know – it’s messed up, okay? We know that. I mean, Christ, it’s not like we ever meant for it to happen. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to fuck my brother. It’s just – it’s a comfort thing. And… it’s Dennis. Out of everyone, I’d thought you might be able to understand that.”

Mac squeezes his eyes shut at that, the reminder that she _knows_. Of course she fucking knows. He could deny it again, but he’s so goddamn tired of pretending – and Dee is apparently in the same boat. She might be able to relate, at least on some level.

He drains the rest of his beer, even though it’s not going to get him nearly drunk enough to have this conversation. “How long have you known?”

Dee glances at him, like she’s surprised he’s actually admitting it, but she recovers quickly enough. “A while. He didn’t tell me, by the way. You’re just not that subtle.”

Mac isn’t sure if he’s reassured by that or not. On the one hand he’s glad that Dennis didn’t betray him, that they haven’t been gossiping about it behind his back; but on the other hand, just how obvious is he? If Dee figured it out on her own, then there’s a good chance Frank and Charlie have too, and _fuck,_ he can’t deal with this. His chest feels tight, and he wonders absently if he’s going to have a panic attack.

“Does everyone know?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t said anything if they do. You didn’t… tell them about what you saw, did you?”

Mac shakes his head and Dee sighs with relief. He notices for the first time how exhausted she looks; normally he’d make fun of her, but for once he doesn’t have it in him. He finds himself surprisingly reluctant to shatter this weird, fragile truce they’ve got going.

“Thanks,” Dee says. “I know it wasn’t for me, but still. Thank you.”

Mac shrugs. “Yeah, well, I guess that makes us even. I know you didn’t tell anybody about that night when I came to see you guys in college.”

Dee’s eyes widen comically. “Christ, I’m surprised you even _remember_ that night. You were wasted. Besides, you have to know that I had just as much reason to want that kept secret as you did.”

“I guess,” Mac says doubtfully. A thought occurs to him then. “Oh, shit. You and Dennis weren’t already… then, were you?”

Dee shakes her head. “The first time was a few months after that, I think. Like I said, it’s not like we planned it, but we’d both been drinking and it just kind of _happened_ , probably for the same reasons I came on to you _._ It happened, and then it kept happening, on and off. You know.”

Unfortunately, he does. “You were first, then,” he admits, with only a touch of bitterness. “We didn’t start doing it until after we bought the bar.”

That first time is practically engraved in his memory: the two of them riding a high after their first successful night of business, slightly tipsy from the bottle of champagne they’d shared with Charlie. Dennis had kissed him when they got back to the apartment, and Mac hadn’t said no. Dennis had whispered that he knew what he was doing, that he’d fooled around with some guys in college, and Mac had been more than happy to follow his lead.

He remembers thinking in that moment, with Dennis’s hands on him, Dennis’s mouth on him for the first time, that anything that felt this good _had_ to be a sin.

“If I was first, that means he cheated on _me_ with _you,_ ” Dee says, bringing him back to the here and now. “If anyone gets to be mad about this whole situation, it’s me.”

Mac’s pretty sure she’s joking, but his head is spinning from this whole conversation, and suddenly all he wants to do is sleep for a hundred years. “This is too goddamn weird. I can’t talk about this shit with you.”

“It’s okay,” Dee says, surprisingly gently. “You don’t have to.”

She sets her bottle aside and shifts closer, leans into his side until she’s tucked under his arm, her long legs folded beneath her on the couch. Any other time, Mac would shove her away – any other time, she wouldn’t be cuddling up to him like this in the first place – but he has to admit, it does feel kind of nice, the familiar scent of her shampoo oddly comforting.

It’s probably a proximity thing, he thinks. You spend enough time with anybody, and eventually they start to feel like home.

“Just so we’re clear, this never happened,” he says, without making any effort to move away.

Dee snorts, the sound of it muffled against his chest. “Obviously.” They lapse into comfortable silence for several seconds before she speaks again. “You should come back, you know. Dennis is too stubborn to ask, but he’s better when you’re around.”

“I’ll think about it, okay?” Mac says, despite the fact that he already knows it’s more or less inevitable. Somehow, he always ends up coming back to Dennis.

He just intends to close his eyes for a second, just to rest them, but he finds that sleep rises up to claim him almost instantly. His last conscious thought before he goes under is that at least Dee isn’t going to tell anybody about this. She has just as much of a vested interest in keeping the evening’s events between the two of them as he does.

Mutually assured destruction has its perks, apparently.

\--

He wakes sometime later with a stabbing pain in his neck from spending the night on the couch and thinks, not for the first time, that he’s getting too goddamn old to not be sleeping in a proper bed. Not only that, but there’s an ache in his shoulder from ramming the door, and his cheek is throbbing from where Dennis had hit him. Sitting up with a groan, he realizes that there’s a yellow sticky note on his chest, and he blinks the remaining sleep from his eyes to read the message written in Dee’s untidy scrawl:

_GONE 2 OPEN BAR_  
_YOU’RE WELCOME, DICKHOLE_  
_MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL AND DEAL WITH THE PATIENT_  


Mac snorts, crumpling up the paper and tossing it across the room. Dee will bitch at him for it later, but she’ll just have to fucking deal. By the time he’s been to the bathroom, made and poured away two cups of coffee, and rearranged Dee’s cutlery drawer just to mess with her, he figures he can’t put off the inevitable any longer. Taking a deep breath, he tells himself to stop being such a pussy and knocks with only a small amount of trepidation on the bedroom door.

“Dennis? You up?”

There’s a soft moan from inside that Mac takes as his cue to enter. Dennis is huddled under the blankets in the middle of the gigantic bed, and Mac hovers for a second before sitting down gingerly on the edge of the mattress.

“How you feeling, man?”

Dennis pulls the blankets down just enough so that Mac can see his face. He still looks awful, but there’s a certain kind of softness to him that only ever seems to accompany the aftermath of a breakdown. It always makes Mac want to protect him somehow, even though Dennis is quite possibly the most dangerous person he’s ever known.

“Like shit. What the hell happened? My hand stings like a bitch.”

_Where to even begin?_ “You, uh, broke Dee’s mirror.” He opts for the simplest answer. “She’s pretty pissed at you, dude.”

“She’ll get over it,” Dennis says dismissively. “What does she even need a mirror for anyway, I could tell her she looks like a bird.”

He’s pretty sure Dennis only says it to make him laugh, and it would have worked like a charm just a few months ago before all this weirdness began. But now he can’t help wondering if Dennis says similar things about Mac to Dee when he’s not around, if the two of them make fun of him behind his back the same way that he and Dennis rip into Dee.

“What the hell happened to your face?” Dennis asks, interrupting his thoughts. He reaches out as if to touch Mac’s bruised cheekbone, but his reach falls short and his hand hovers awkwardly in the air between them for a second before it drops back to the mattress. When Mac doesn’t answer right away, Dennis’s expression darkens almost imperceptibly.

“Did I do that?”

“You don’t remember?” Mac says, avoiding the actual question. He’s pretty sure Dennis knows damn well what the answer is anyway, even if he has no memory of it.

Dennis shakes his head. “Shit. Sorry, man.”

Mac squints at him, but he can’t detect a trace of manipulation anywhere on his face. Dennis is sincere as he ever is.

“It’s nothing,” he shrugs, and means it. His face will heal, and Dennis has matching bruises around his wrists, delicate purple bracelets from where Mac had maybe been a little too forceful in trying to restrain him.

They’ve inflicted worse on each other, over the years. They’ll live.

“Dee says you stopped taking your meds,” he blurts out, clumsily changing the subject before he has a chance to think it through. He regrets it almost immediately when Dennis’s face closes off, his harsh edges returning as if they’d never been away.

“And how is that any of her goddamn business? Or yours, for that matter? I hate it when you do that. Both of you. You look at me like I’m fucking crazy.”

“I know you’re not crazy, Dennis,” Mac sighs. “I just… I worry about you, okay?”

The truth is he’s still not really sure what to make of it, this borderline thing that Dennis supposedly has. He doesn’t trust any shrink as far as he could throw them, and he hates the way that Dee talks about it, the way she makes it all sound so cold and clinical; like there’s something wrong with Dennis, like he’s sick. As far as Mac is concerned, Dennis is just Dennis, and his weird rage and mood swings have always been a part of that. Maybe they weren’t always quite this intense, but they’ve been simmering away in the background for as long as Mac can remember.

If the pills help with that, then he figures that Dennis actually taking them can only be a good thing. Much as he hates to admit it, Dee was right: it _had_ seemed as though Dennis was doing better lately, before they went to the suburbs and everything got fucked up.

“My hero,” Dennis says – mockingly, of course, but Mac is pretty sure he isn’t imagining the note of fondness in there too. Then he adds, softer, almost vulnerable: “So, are you back?”

Mac is somewhat surprised to realize that he already has his answer ready. “I guess. I mean, I still think this thing with you and Dee is fucking weird, but we talked last night, and… I get it, kind of. And I don’t know how much longer I can keep sleeping in the bar without going completely goddamn insane, so yeah, I’m back. For a while, at least.”

“Good,” Dennis says. “I missed you, you know.”

He’s painfully earnest like Dennis never is, and it makes something in Mac’s chest ache. On impulse, he reaches across the bed and takes one of Dennis’s hands in his, brushing his thumb lightly over the busted knuckles.

“Yeah. You too.”

\--

Mac goes to church that Sunday for the first time in weeks. Usually he finds there’s a sense of comfort, of belonging in blending in with the rest of the congregation and letting the priest’s droning voice wash over him without paying too much attention to the words – but today his heart isn’t in it, and he recites the prayers by rote while his mind is a million miles away, back with Dennis in the apartment.

He’s so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he almost doesn’t notice some dude shoving a flyer under his nose on his way out the doors, only registering it when he’s out of the parking lot and the paper is already in his hand. Glancing down, he sees that it’s some rival church trying to recruit new members, and he’s about to crumple it up and toss it away when his attention is caught by a line of text at the bottom of the page:

_All new members are automatically entered into a prize draw for the chance to win an exclusive, all-expenses paid trip to the Bahamas on our Christian fellowship cruise! (Terms and Conditions apply.)_

What the hell, Mac thinks, slipping the flyer into his back pocket. Maybe a change is exactly what he needs.


	3. dennis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The third and final installment! There is an actual three-way sex scene in this chapter but again, no direct sexual contact takes place between Mac and Dee. Also contains mention of attempted suicide, talk of the "implication" and Dennis's headspace, which probably deserves a warning in and of itself.

**03\. dennis**

A Christian cruise isn’t exactly Dennis’s idea of a good time, especially once he finds out that there’s not going to be any alcohol on board, but he figures it will make Mac happy, which is why he finds himself trying to sell the rest of the gang on the idea. The way he sees it, Mac can go off and do his God thing while the rest of them tag along for a free trip to the Bahamas, and everybody wins.

“You’re so whipped,” Dee says to him after he’s done convincing Frank and Charlie. Dennis tells her to go fuck herself, but it doesn’t do anything to change the insufferable know-it-all look on her face. And, okay, maybe he is being a little transparent, but Mac has _just_ decided to start talking to him again after his little hissy-fit; there’s still a weird tension between them, and Dennis is eager to get things back on track as soon as possible.

Besides, he reasons, a change of scenery might be good for all of them. God knows he could use a vacation.

Still, he gets a vaguely anxious feeling in his gut whenever he thinks about the trip, one that only grows steadily worse the closer it gets. He’s not normally one for superstition – that’s Mac’s thing, and besides, Dennis likes to consider himself the rational, logical one of the gang – but he still finds himself standing in Dee’s bedroom the night before they’re supposed to set sail, trying to decide which shirts to pack and all the while unable to shake the feeling that things are about to go terribly, disastrously wrong.

Dee tells him he’s being paranoid, and that it probably has something to do with the fact their last attempt at a vacation ended with him shattering both his ankles. Come to think of it, Dennis is pretty sure they’ve _never_ had a trip that didn’t end in catastrophe, so he’s not really sure how her argument is supposed to make him feel any better, and tells her as much.

Dee shrugs, shoving two identical pairs of jean shorts into her case. “Hey, it’s no skin off my nose if you wanna call this thing off. I’m not exactly thrilled about being stuck out in the open ocean with a bunch of Bible-thumpers, you know.”

“Hey, you guys done packing yet?” Mac comes bounding into the room as if summoned, apparently so caught up in his excitement that he forgets his newfound policy of knocking whenever he enters a room, like he’s expecting to walk in on Dennis and Dee boning at any minute.

Dee casts a significant look over at Dennis, raising her eyebrows pointedly. They both know he isn’t about to call this thing off, not when they’re finally starting to get back to something like their normal equilibrium.

“Almost done, bro,” Dennis says distractedly. “Just trying to decide which one of these shirts brings out my eyes better. What do you think?” He holds them both up to his chest for an opinion.

“The blue, dude,” Mac says, at the exact same time as Dee says, “gray, obviously.” Dennis sighs and tosses them both into his suitcase. He figures it’s best to have options, anyway, and thankfully Mac is too distracted running through his checklist to bother trying to start a fight with Dee.

“Now remember, there’s no booze,” he reminds them for what feels like the fiftieth time, “but I was thinking maybe we should bring some mouthwash or something so we don’t get sick?”

“Good thinking,” Dennis says. Honestly, he’d been planning on smuggling some alcohol on board anyway, because there’s no way in hell he’s doing this thing sober, but he figures what Mac doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

“This is gonna be so much fun!” Mac beams, clapping his hands together decisively. “Thanks for talking everyone round, man. That reminds me, I got you both something…” He digs around in his pocket and comes out with two of the tackiest gold crosses Dennis has ever seen, tossing one each to both him and Dee. “I know you guys aren’t so much into the whole religion thing, but I figure this way you’ll blend in better, you know.”

Dennis mutters his thanks, hoping he doesn’t sound as insincere as he feels. Mercifully, Mac doesn’t seem to notice, dashing out of the room again while rambling something about checking up on Frank and Charlie.

“I am not wearing this thing, Dennis,” Dee stage-whispers as soon as he’s gone.

“Yeah, no shit,” Dennis says.

“Is he trying to convert us? Is that what this whole thing is about? I don’t want to be converted, Dennis.”

Dennis tunes out his sister’s ranting, staring down at the ugly bit of jewelry in the palm of his hand. Somehow, his feeling of foreboding just got a whole lot worse.

\--

As it turns out, Dennis should really learn to start listening to his gut feelings, because bad things happen when he doesn’t. They’d ended up nearly drowning, and in the midst of all that madness, things had gotten uncomfortably real. Charlie somehow went even _more_ insane than normal and tried to shoot himself in the head, Mac had some kind of all-too-brief epiphany about his sexuality before heading right back into the closet of denial, and Dee turned out to have her own version of the implication that Dennis is _definitely_ going to be asking her some questions about later.

Amazingly, everything returns to normal fairly quickly after what Dennis is now referring to in his head as the cruise from hell – but it’s a weird, forced kind of normal, like they’re all trying too hard to put what happened on the ship behind them and none of them are quite succeeding. Things were said that can’t be taken back; doors were opened that can’t now be closed because the horses have long left the stable, or however that particular idiom goes.

They’d almost died. For a moment back there, Dennis had been certain it was the end, and maybe that’s something they can’t just shove down and paper over with their usual mixture of booze and denial.

Not that that’s stopped any of them from trying.

Three days after their safe return to dry land, he finds Mac sitting at Dee’s rickety kitchen table, scribbling furiously in a legal pad he must’ve dug out from God only knows where. There are further sheets of crumpled-up paper scattered in a wide arc all around him, and every so often he pauses in his fevered writing to chew on the cap of the pen, brow furrowed in thought. It makes him look even dumber than usual, and for some reason Dennis finds it infuriatingly cute.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” he asks.

Mac jumps guiltily, like he’s been caught out doing something illicit. There’s a smudge of ink at the corner of his mouth, and Dennis fights the urge to wipe it away with his thumb. “If you really wanna know, I’m writing to my dad to let him know that I didn’t get any of his letters because some asshole shredded them all.”

_Ah._ Yeah, they haven’t really talked about this. It’s on the tip of Dennis’s tongue to make some caustic remark, or at least to tell Mac that he’s better off without his unbelievable creep of a father around, but he keeps it to himself for once. He figures he’s already done enough damage in this particular department to last them for at least the next few months.

“And don’t even think about doing the same thing if he writes back, ‘cause I’ll know if you do,” Mac adds sternly, glaring at Dennis across the room.

Dennis raises his hands in a placating gesture as he makes his way over to the coffeemaker. “Okay, okay, I won’t. Jesus, Mac, you really think I’d do that now that the cat’s out of the bag? Of course you’d know.” Honestly, he kind of doubts that Luther will bother to reply anyway. The letters stopped coming over a year ago.

Mac purses his lips but doesn’t say anything, instead picks up his pen and resumes writing again. Dennis fucking hates it when he does this passive-aggressive thing, would much prefer it if Mac just yelled at him about whatever it is that's got him upset instead of leaving Dennis to guess.

He takes a deep breath and mentally counts to ten before he says something he’ll inevitably end up regretting. “Okay, out with it.”

Mac blinks at him. “What?”

“Don’t do that. You’re obviously still pissed at me, and it’s not just the letters thing. So what is it?”

Mac sighs and fidgets with the pen, still avoiding Dennis’s eyes. “I just – how come you can say it to Dee but not to me?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dennis asks, and the confusion isn’t an act for once; he’s completely fucking lost now. Evidently it’s the wrong thing to say because Mac stands abruptly with his fists balled at his sides, a quick flash of anger crossing his face before he sets his jaw in that familiar stubborn mask. It’s actually kind of a relief to see: an angry Mac is at least something that Dennis has plenty of practice in dealing with. His apathetic despair on the ship had just been unsettling.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Mac says. “On the ship, before we all went under. You told Dee that you loved her. We thought we were all gonna die, and that’s what you wanted your last words to be. I mean, what’s so special about her, anyway?”

Dennis definitely hadn’t expected that, and he has no idea what to say. He supposes he shouldn’t really be surprised – Mac has always been embarrassingly needy – and he can’t quite deny that the very worst parts of him quite like the idea of Mac being jealous of his relationship with Dee. Still, when he thinks about it he realizes he doesn’t actually know why he’d been able to say the words to Dee and not to Mac, other than it had felt right at the time. It’s always been easier to admit it to Dee, safer; she’s his sister, after all, his own flesh and blood, and Dennis feels secure in the knowledge that that bond will always hold between them, no matter how much they hurt and use and torment each other.

With Mac, though, it’s different. There’s always been an element of choice to their relationship; Mac isn’t related to him by blood or by law, and there’s always the lingering fear that one day Dennis will push him too far and he’ll walk out for good. They’ve already come dangerously close to just that eventuality on more than one occasion, and things haven’t exactly been normal between them for a while – at least since the suburbs, if not before then. Dennis hadn’t been about to put himself on the line for something that could blow up in his face, impending death or no.

He must have been silent for too long, because Mac scoffs and turns on his heel like he’s about to storm out of the room. Before Dennis can think about it, his hand shoots out and grabs Mac’s wrist, preventing him from leaving.

“Wait. Just… wait a goddamn second, would you?”

Mac glances down at where Dennis’s fingers are wrapped around his wrist; Dennis can feel his pulse beating away beneath the thin skin, slightly too fast for a normal resting rate. He could easily break the hold if he really wanted to, but instead he just stands there, waiting to hear Dennis out.

“What do you want me to say, Mac? She’s my sister.”

“And?”

“And you’re my brother. I said that to you on the boat, remember?”

Admittedly, he’d mostly said it to manipulate Mac at the time, but that doesn’t make it any less true. He hopes it’s enough, that Mac will understand what it is he’s trying to say.

“You are so fucked up, dude,” Mac says after a long pause – but he’s smiling, just a little. Dennis doesn’t really have an answer for that anyway, so he tugs Mac closer and kisses him deep, like he’s trying to steal the air from his lungs. It’s the first time they’ve made out since they arrived in the suburbs, both of them excited and giddy at the prospect of having an entire house to themselves. That seems like a lifetime ago now, back before this entire clusterfuck began; before Dennis Jr., before Mac found out about him and Dee, before things got so messed up between them.

For the first time in a long time, Dennis feels optimistic that they might be able to salvage something here after all. He drags his thumb across Mac’s spit-slick lips after they separate, enjoying the hazy, drugged look Mac gets in response.

“Still not gay, huh?” he asks wryly, and maybe it’d be better not to poke that particular bear, but he genuinely doesn’t get the way Mac’s mind works sometimes, wants Mac to make him understand. He must know by now that none of them give a shit about his sexuality, and it obviously isn’t just the religion thing that’s keeping him in the closet because he’d been perfectly fine with denouncing God for the few short hours they were stuck in boat jail.

“Don’t,” Mac says, dropping his gaze. “I’m not… This is different.”

“How? How is it different?”

“Do I really have to say it, dude?" Mac says, and his eyes are practically begging for an out that Dennis refuses to give him. "It’s us. It’s just… _different_.”

Privately, Dennis thinks that there must be a whole complex belief system of warped logic and delusional self-justification backing up that claim. Maybe one day Mac will even tell him about it.

That day can wait, though. For now, he’s got what he needs.

\--

He sometimes has this dream – more of a fantasy, really – of having both Mac and Dee at the same time. There are few things hotter than a threesome, after all, and this particular setup would be perfect, because Dennis would be the star of the show; the two of them can’t stand each other, and Mac is gay as shit anyway, so both of their attentions would be focused solely on Dennis.

It would take some persuading, of course, but that aspect of the proceedings usually gets glossed over in his imagination. He knows each of them intimately, knows exactly what makes them tick, how to wring every last drop of pleasure out of them. Mac is both eager to please and easy to satisfy, not to mention surprisingly open to experimentation, which had thrilled Dennis no end to discover. When they first started out, he was fumbling and uncoordinated and it had been painfully obvious that he’d spent most of his life fucking the wrong gender, but Dennis taught him well and these days he’s as smooth and assured as you like.

With Dee, it’s a different story; she makes him work for it, refuses to give him too much praise, but that just makes it all the more gratifying when she does reward him by letting her guard slip. And she’s his twin, his mirror image; Dennis has known her longer than anybody, and they’d learned one another’s bodies at the same time. Even now, after all these years, it still feels like an accomplishment every time he gets a sigh or a moan out of her – even more so if he manages to make her laugh.

The thought of having them both at once is the ultimate forbidden fruit, something that could never happen outside of his fantasies for the same reasons that make it so appealing in the first place, and somehow the fact that everything is finally out in the open between the three of them only makes the possibility seem even more remote. Mac is thankfully talking to him again, but he still insists on sleeping in the living room every night and won’t let Dennis take things further than kissing between them before he pulls away. Even more frustratingly, Dee won’t sleep with him in anything other than the most literal sense, keeps a respectable distance between them in the bed every night and shuts him down whenever he tries anything. As far as Dennis is aware, he hasn’t done anything to piss her off lately, so he can only assume it’s out of some newfound sympathy for Mac.

It makes no sense, because normally Dee would seize any opportunity to get one over on Mac and then shove it in his face – but it’s actually something of a disturbing trend that Dennis begins to notice in the weeks that follow their cruise adventure, in that Dee and Mac are actually being nice to each other.

Or, okay, maybe _nice_ is the wrong word – they’re still Dee and Mac, after all, and therefore two of the biggest scumbags in Philadelphia – but they’re definitely getting along much better than they ever have before. Over the twenty-odd years they’ve known each other, Dennis can count on one hand the number of times they’ve been able to make it through a simple conversation without hurling insults and sometimes physical blows at each other, but all of a sudden it’s like they’re joined at the goddamn hip. Dennis loses track of the amount of times he walks into a room only to find them sat whispering to each other with their heads bent close together, or actually honest-to-god _giggling_ like schoolgirls at a slumber party.

The worst part is that they always stop whenever Dennis walks in, falling silent or hastily changing the subject with about as much subtlety as a brick to the face, all while looking at him with wide-eyed butter-wouldn’t-melt expressions.

The whole thing is frankly unnerving, and it reminds Dennis of that old joke about how you shouldn’t let your current girlfriend hang out with your ex, even though he’s pretty sure he’s never actually dated either of them. It’s that same creeping sense of paranoia, like they’re spending their little gossiping sessions trading embarrassing sex stories about him or talking about the size of his dick or something.

On the one hand, he seriously kind of doubts that that’s what’s going on, not least because Dennis Reynolds is a sex _god,_ thank you very much, and the blame for any unsatisfactory performances lies squarely on the shoulders of his partners. But then on the other hand, what the hell else could they suddenly have to talk about, after two decades of mostly ignoring and abusing each other?

Eventually Dennis can’t take it anymore, and so he corners Dee alone in the back office one afternoon to try and get some sense out of her.

“Alright, spill. What the hell is going on with you and Mac?”

Dee slants him an odd look but otherwise doesn’t pause in her task of checking the inventory or seem the least bit perturbed. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, don’t think I haven’t noticed the two of you sneaking around and acting all buddy-buddy all of a sudden. It’s unnatural, and I want to know what you’re up to.

“Who says we have to be up to anything?” Dee shrugs. “Maybe we just finally decided to start getting along. I always wanted a gay best friend, you know.”

Dennis gapes at her. “Okay, first of all, since _when?_ Also, you and Mac hate each other.”

“Oh, come on, we don’t _hate_ each other. Strongly dislike, maybe.” She finally finishes up counting the limes and turns to face him, putting her hands on her hips. “Look, what do you want from me? The man lives in my apartment, and he’s clearly not leaving anytime soon since the two of you have your weird codependent marriage thing going on. It was either this or killing him in his sleep, and honestly, the bloodstains would be a bitch to get out of my carpet. Why do you even care?” She squints at him suspiciously. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

Her lip curls up in a sneer that makes Dennis want to strangle her, just a little. “What? Dee, that’s ridiculous, I’m not _jealous,_ ” he snaps, far less convincingly than he’d intended.

Dee knows it, too; the sneer turns into a full-blown smirk. “Relax, bro. I’m not gonna steal your boyfriend.”

She pats his chest condescendingly and then turns and leaves the room, leaving Dennis sputtering in her wake.

Somehow, he isn’t reassured.

\--

The truth is, Dennis had something like a moment of clarity when they were all beneath the surface of the water on that sinking ship. If he’s feeling poetic, he might even call it an epiphany.

Everything looked different underwater, in the stillness and the silence. Mac offered his hand like an olive branch and Dennis accepted it without a second thought, forgetting all the bitter resentment that had been brewing between them over the last few months as their fingers laced together like it was easy, like this was the way that things were supposed to be. On his other side, Dee did the same, taking his hand in her own; smaller and slimmer than Mac’s, but her grip was no less sure. She smiled at him when he turned to look at her, returning his _I love you_ without words.

They looked beautiful in the water, both of them, and caught between them like that Dennis felt closer to peace than he’d been in years. He thought, truly thought that he was about to die, and in that moment, with those people at his side, he’d actually been okay with it.

Some nights he dreams that they’re still drowning, and he wakes up gasping for air until Dee elbows him in the side and tells him to go the fuck back to sleep.

He doesn’t think of them as nightmares. Getting pulled from the water was a jarring, disorienting crash back to reality, like leaving the womb, and sometimes Dennis thinks that maybe they should have stayed there.

It probably would have been a better ending than any of them really deserve.

\--

The girl that Dennis is taking out tonight is definitely gorgeous (mid-twenties, C-cup, redhead with legs for days), and proof that he isn’t off his game in the slightest, but for some reason he can’t make himself concentrate on her. Demonstrating his value feels like too much effort, and he keeps getting distracted, other thoughts – memories, really – coming to him at random, seemingly from nowhere. The way Dee had sounded the last time he went down on her, soft and breathless, the noises she makes just for him. How Mac had looked at him the first time they’d fucked, like Dennis was worth something – like he was worth everything.

The way they’d both smiled at him under the water, like they were perfectly content to die right there and then, with Dennis suspended between the two of them.

It’s been the same story almost every night for the last month, and it’s fucking irritating. He charms his way into getting a date, then spends the entire time thinking about his sister and his best friend until the girl eventually gets weirded out and he ends up going home alone. Usually those nights end with him angrily jerking off in the bathroom before crawling into bed, since neither Mac nor Dee seem willing to yield in their ongoing cock-blocking efforts.

He’d thought he needed to get laid, just a simple hookup with some random stranger to get him back into his groove, but now he isn’t so sure. He’s just so goddamn tired, and it occurs to him that he’s almost forty and his life looks nothing like what he thought it would be by now. The problem is, he doesn’t know what it’s _supposed_ to look like. When he was younger, he’d always pictured himself eventually settling down with a wife and couple of kids, but he’s pretty sure that’s not something he ever actually _wanted_ for himself, just what society told him he was supposed to want.

Besides, he’d already tried the whole marriage thing once before, and what had that gotten him, other than an ex-wife who was trying to turn herself into a _literal_ crazy cat lady with his alimony payments?

Still, the thought nags at him: if not that, then what _does_ he want?

About halfway through the second round of drinks, the girl (Maria? Melissa? Shit, he doesn’t even know) asks him if everything is okay, and he can’t do this anymore. He offers her a lame excuse on his way out of the bar – some trendy new joint with neon lights that give him a headache – and makes his way back to the apartment, where he finds Dee and Mac watching _Thunder Gun Express_ in the living room.

“You missed the dong scene,” Dee says by way of a greeting, without even turning around to look at him.

“We’ve seen this movie like twenty times already, I’m sure I’ll live,” Dennis replies, though he’s maybe a little bit disappointed. It’s always fun to watch Mac get flustered and try to hide his obvious arousal while Dee practically salivates over the admittedly impressive girth on screen. Also, since when do the two of them have movie nights without him?

“How was the date, bro?” Mac asks; Dennis is pretty sure he isn’t imagining the hint of jealousy in his voice, and he allows himself a tiny smirk where Mac can’t see.

“Total bust. Turns out the chick was only a five up close. Maybe even a four.”

“Sure,” Dee says, entirely too skeptically for Dennis’s liking. He rolls his eyes but heroically refrains from taking the bait, instead choosing to be the bigger man as he sinks down into the space they’ve left for him on the narrow couch, tucked between the two of them. It’s a tight squeeze, and he ends up half sitting in Mac’s lap, but they make it work.

By the time the credits begin to roll, Dee’s hand – which had been resting on his knee throughout the movie – starts to slide up his thigh, inch by slow, torturous inch. Dennis glances at her in surprise, but she’s still staring straight ahead at the TV screen with an impressive poker face, giving nothing away. It’s not that the attention is unwelcome – it’s been an embarrassingly long time, after all, and he can feel his body beginning to respond already – but he’s acutely aware of Mac sitting on his other side, and even though it’s all out in the open now, he’s pretty sure it would still be weird to do this in front of him.

He’s about to say something when he realizes that Mac is actually _watching_ Dee, his eyes fixed on her hand, and he isn’t freaking out or making some half-hearted excuse to leave the room. His arm is draped around Dennis almost possessively, and his thumb is rubbing small circles over a patch of bare skin on Dennis’s bicep, a soothing counterpoint to Dee’s teasing.

_Huh._

Dee shifts her hand higher, so that her pinky finger is brushing his crotch, and it’s about all that Dennis can take.

“Okay, what is this?” he asks shakily. He has precisely zero control over this situation, and he’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to like the feeling as much as he does. “What are you doing right now?”

“Oh, come on,” Dee says, “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about this.”

Mac laughs, a dark, rich sound that sends a thrill up Dennis’s spine. He _has_ thought about it, of course he has, he used to dream about this exact scenario – only in his fantasies there’s usually a lot more coercion involved on his part. He never anticipated this; this slow, sweet seduction from both of them at once, and he has no idea how to react to it.

His utter confusion must show on his face, because Dee sighs and withdraws her hand. “Look, we’ve talked about this, okay? We want to do this.”

“If it’s what you want,” Mac adds.

Dennis’s head is spinning. “You… _talked_ about this. Both of you.” So that’s what all their little chats have been about after all. He tries to imagine it, the two of them sitting down to have a calm, rational discussion about their plans for a bisexual incestuous three-way, and he’s struck with sudden urge to laugh at how ludicrous it all sounds.

_“Why?”_ It’s the only thing he can think to say, because he can’t for the life of him imagine why either of them would want to do this, even as it feels like all his wildest fantasies coming true at once.

Dee rolls her eyes at him. “Because we love you, dumbass.”

The thing is, it’s not like it’s a goddamn revelation; Dennis _knows_ they love him, and not just because his raw sexual magnetism makes him irresistible to every straight woman and gay man on the planet. But something about the way she says it – so simple and easy, like she’s just stating a necessary truth – winds up knocking him for six anyway, and he feels dizzy, lightheaded with it, like there’s a dam that’s been knocked loose somewhere inside of him. His throat gets tight, and for a horrifying second he’s genuinely worried that he might actually burst into tears.

“Well, shit, I’m game if you guys are,” he says instead, trying to establish at least a modicum of command over proceedings.

There seem to be hands everywhere as they make their way to the bedroom, impossible to keep track of who’s doing what and when. Instead, Dennis is left with a series of fleeting impressions: Dee running her hands down his chest, slipping the buttons of his shirt through their holes one at a time; Mac tugging him backwards by his belt loops, eager and impatient. Then they’re pushing him down onto the mattress, and Mac is kneeling on the floor to untie his shoes as Dee straddles his lap to wrestle his shirt the rest of the way off. Dennis reaches for the hem of her t-shirt, but she slaps his hand away and skins it off herself, quirking her eyebrows at him when she re-emerges from the fabric. Dennis gets the message: _If you want this, you’re going to play by our rules._

He finds himself surprisingly content to go along with it, at least for the time being.

Mac clambers up onto the bed behind Dennis, wrapping an arm around his middle; somewhere along the way he’s lost his shirt as well, and Dennis leans into him until his back is pressed to Mac’s chest, skin on skin. Dee is still perched on his lap in her ratty white bra that looks as though it’s seen better days, jutting hipbones visible above the waistband of her jeans. They’re a study in contrast, the two of them; masculine and feminine, firm muscle and subtle curves. The rasp of Mac’s beard against his neck is a counterpoint to Dee’s soft hands on his chest – Dennis is caught helplessly in the middle of the clashing sensations, his senses confused and impossibly aroused all at once.

“So what’s your big plan?” he asks, craning around to look between the two of them. “Now that you’ve got me where you want me, I mean.”

Dee smirks a little, glancing briefly over Dennis’s shoulder to exchange a look with Mac before she leans in closer to murmur in Dennis’s ear:

“I want to watch Mac fuck you. I want to see it. How’s that sound?”

Dennis feels his cock twitch just at the mere suggestion, heat racing up his spine. Dee might be running this show, but, he realizes as he twists around to look at Mac again, they must have planned this all out ahead of time, because Mac is watching him with hunger in his eyes, waiting on his answer.

“Sure,” he gets out eventually, “I’m down with that.”

The truth is, he doesn’t bottom all that often – not because he doesn’t like it, but because he likes it _too much;_ it always leaves him feeling wrung out and needy, and the loss of control that goes along with it can be a dangerous thing, leaving him vulnerable to exposing too much of himself, shattering the perfectly cultivated image that he works so hard to maintain. Right now, though, with these two, it feels right. They’ve both seen more of him than anybody else ever has anyway, the good and the bad; he’s not even sure he’s got much else to give.

Besides which, there are times when nothing satisfies the persistent emptiness inside of him quite like getting thoroughly fucked.

They shed the rest of the clothes in record time, and then Dennis is bracing himself against the headboard as Mac works him open with two fingers and a generous helping of lube. They might not do this very often, but it’s still often enough that Mac knows what he’s doing, and Dennis can’t help the choked whimper that escapes him every time he brushes up against that sweet spot.

“You’re such a slut, Dennis,” Dee says fondly. She’s kneeling on her haunches in front of him, caged in on either side by his white-knuckled grip on the headboard, and every so often she leans forward to bite at his lip or run her fingers through his sweaty curls. “I’m pretty sure he can take another,” she adds, and in his current state it takes Dennis a second to realize that she’s addressing Mac.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Mac says absently; Dennis hears the sound of the lube being uncapped somewhere behind him, and then an entirely involuntary groan is wrenched from him as Mac withdraws his fingers. Dee winks at him and shuffles further down the bed before he can protest, lying flat underneath Dennis and kicking his knees further apart to make space for herself. From this angle, Dennis can’t see what she’s doing, but he’s not left to wonder long before she leans up and takes his cockhead into her mouth just as Mac’s fingers return, three instead of two now, the stretch as they enter him just the right side of painful.

“Jesus _fuck._ ” Somehow not being able to see what they’re doing to him makes the whole thing even hotter, and Dennis surrenders himself entirely to the sensations, rocking backwards onto Mac’s fingers and then forward into Dee’s mouth, blindly seeking out relief. Up until now, he’d been operating under the assumption that this was all just foreplay leading up to the main event, but it doesn’t take long before he’s teetering precariously close to the edge, and they’re not showing any signs of stopping.

“I’m not gonna last much longer if you guys keep this up,” he warns.

“Uh, yeah, that’s kind of the idea,” Mac says. Dee hums her agreement around his cock, swirling her tongue around the tip and sucking him even harder, and that’s when Dennis pretty much gives in. Mac crooks his fingers just right inside of him, and that’s all she wrote: Dennis’s cock pulses once, twice, and then he’s coming harder than he ever has in his life.

He’s still a little out of it when Dee pulls off and moves back up to eye level. She takes hold of his jaw and kisses him, forcing her tongue between his lips and pushing his own release into his mouth, letting him taste himself. Dennis swallows what he can on reflex, but some of it ends up dribbling messily out the corner of his mouth. By all rights, it should be disgusting – it _is_ disgusting – and yet somehow it’s also one of the hottest fucking things that’s ever happened to him.

Dee pulls away, a satisfied smirk playing around her lips, and Dennis turns his head to seek out Mac, who’s still lazily finger-fucking him, leaning close over Dennis’s body. Every brush of his prostate lights up Dennis’s body with aftershocks, and he reaches back to wind an arm around Mac’s neck, dragging him closer to exchange sloppy, uncoordinated kisses.

“Gross,” Mac says, but he returns the kiss anyway, chasing after the last remnants of Dennis’s taste with his tongue.

“So, you gonna fuck me or what?” Dennis asks breathlessly when they separate.

“Impatient,” Dee says, which makes Mac laugh, the sound of it sending a strange warmth spreading through Dennis’s chest. Whenever he’d pictured this, he’d always imagined them competing, fighting over him, but somehow the two of them working together, putting aside their differences to please him is way better than anything he’s been able to conjure up in his fantasies.

Then Mac pulls out again before Dennis can think too much about what it might mean, another one of those pathetically needy little whimpers escaping him at the loss of friction. He can hear the unmistakable sound of Mac slicking up his cock from behind him and he tries to turn around, wanting to help – or at least _see_ – but Dee holds him in place by kissing him again, open-mouthed and filthy, and Dennis gets so wrapped up in it that it’s almost a surprise when he finally feels the head of Mac’s cock nudging insistently at his entrance.

He pushes in slow; Dennis is stretched out enough that the burn is manageable, satisfying rather than truly painful. Dee grazes his bottom lip with her teeth as she pulls back from the kiss, and that helps some too, his shaky groan muffled against her mouth.

“You good?” Mac asks once he’s all the way home. Dennis responds by rocking back against him experimentally, testing the waters a little; already the dull ache is starting to dissipate, a fresh wave of pleasure taking its place. Mac curses under his breath, digging his fingers into Dennis’s hips hard enough to bruise.

“Yeah, I think he’s good,” Dee says around a breathy laugh. She’s touching herself now, her hand moving almost lazily between her legs, a visual stimulus that Dennis can’t help but appreciate as Mac begins to move inside of him with short, shallow thrusts.

His recent orgasm has taken the edge off his urgency some, but it still feels good – better than good, amazing. In Dennis’s experience, there are few things that compare to the feeling of being filled so completely, and the fact that he isn’t currently focused on racing to the finish line almost allows him to enjoy it more. Especially when Mac suddenly sits back, dragging Dennis along with him so that he’s balanced in Mac’s lap; Mac has such an inflated opinion of his own skill that sometimes Dennis forgets he’s actually pretty strong, and the fact that he’s able to hold Dennis in place with only an arm braced across his chest as he keeps the pace going is all kinds of hot. The change in position allows him to get even deeper, and it must say something about Dennis’s incredible stamina because he can feel his dick starting to take an interest in proceedings again already.

Dee moans quietly, watching them. She’s not laughing anymore, Dennis notices; biting at her lip, cheeks flushed as she moves her fingers in and out of herself, keeping time with Mac’s thrusts. Dennis figures what the hell, might as well give her a show; he spreads his knees a little wider and grips his cock, attempting to coax it back to hardness as he lets his head fall back against Mac’s shoulder.

Mac is getting close now, Dennis can tell from the way he loses his rhythm slightly, his breath puffing fast and uneven in Dennis’s ear. Dennis grinds back down onto him a little harder in response, taking back some of the control as he reaches behind himself with his free hand to dig his nails into the soft flesh of Mac’s ass.

“You’re so good, baby,” Dennis purrs, mostly because he knows it’s the kind of thing that gets Mac going. Dee makes a vaguely choked sound that he ignores, his attention now focused on Mac. “It’s okay, you can come now. I know you want to.”

Mac groans and buries his face in the crook of Dennis’s neck; it only takes a few more erratic thrusts before he goes completely still, spilling into Dennis with nothing more than a quiet grunt.

“Fuck, Dennis,” he says afterwards, pulling out carefully and collapsing in an exhausted heap on the mattress.

“I’m pretty sure you just did,” Dennis says, which makes Mac snort tiredly.

“Yeah, which makes it my turn now,” Dee adds. She pushes Dennis down onto his back and swings a leg over his face before he can really process what’s happening. He gets the message soon enough, though, once he’s face to face with her slick, swollen cunt, and he takes hold of her thighs to steady himself as he leans up to taste her.

He’d never admit it to her face, but Dee taking charge like this has always been a ridiculous turn-on for him, and he wraps a hand around his dick to jerk himself off as he eats her out, wondering idly whether he’ll get to come again before the night is done. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s achieved multiple orgasms in a single sexual encounter, but it would definitely be the first in a long while.

After a moment, he feels Mac’s hand join his own on his cock, and it occurs to Dennis that he’s _watching_ this, the same way that Dee had just watched the two of them. He kind of wishes that he could see the expression on Mac’s face, but they’ve watched Dennis’s sex tapes together enough times that he’s pretty sure he knows what it looks like anyway.

“You’re so good at that, Den,” Mac says, like he knows exactly what Dennis is thinking. “I always liked watching you.”

“Jesus Christ, Mac, try not to feed his ego more than strictly necessary.” Dee huffs out from somewhere above him. Dennis knows she’s just putting up a front – he can tell from the way her thighs are shaking on either side of his head _exactly_ how good he is, thanks – but he makes sure to press the point of his tongue extra hard against her clit in retaliation, causing her to gasp and jerk her hips against him.

Dennis is fully hard again now, working in tandem with Mac to bring himself back up to the edge, and he re-doubles his efforts to get Dee off first, alternating between sucking on her clit and circling his tongue around her entrance. She’s cursing up a storm now, rocking against his face, and Dennis thinks it’s too bad she doesn’t have a camera in here because this is one sex tape he’d like to watch back at some point in the future. As it is he makes do with his imagination, picturing the way her face must look, blonde hair in disarray as he drives her closer to the finish.

Dennis moans against her as Mac’s thumb slides over the head of his cock, taking him by surprise, and the added vibration is apparently all it takes to push Dee over the edge; Dennis feels her muscles tighten around him and then she’s shaking with the force of her orgasm, gasping out Dennis’s name amidst as string of nonsense as she rides it out. It’s sensory overload, and Dennis finds himself following in her wake; he comes for the second time just like that, with his face buried in his sister’s pussy as he spills what little he has left in him over his and Mac’s joined hands.

After a few seconds, Dee climbs off and flops down on the bed beside him, looking every bit as spent as Dennis feels.

“Hi,” she says somewhat breathlessly, favoring him with one her rare, genuine smiles. Dennis finds himself struck by her beauty the way that he sometimes is – usually in moments like this, when she’s covered in a light sheen of sweat, hair mussed and makeup smeared and totally, one hundred percent unabashed about all of it.

“Hi,” he says back.

Mac disentangles his hand from where it’s still joined with Dennis’s and slides out of the bed, out of the room. For an instant Dennis is concerned that he’s running away again now that the deed is done, retreating to the safety of the living room, but he relaxes once he hears the bathroom light snap on followed by the sound of running water. Mac returns a moment later with two washcloths; he tosses one to Dee and uses the other to wipe away the come that’s splashed on Dennis’s belly and leaking from between his thighs, oddly gentle, almost reverent in his ministrations. It all feels disturbingly intimate, which is ridiculous given what they’ve just done, but whatever.

Once he’s finished, Mac throws away the cloth and climbs back into the bed behind Dennis, wrapping an arm around his waist and dragging him close. It’s been so long that Dennis had almost forgotten; the way that Mac is all clingy affection after sex, worse than any chick he’s ever been with. The truth is, Dennis has always enjoyed it more than he’s probably supposed to, but he normally puts up at least a token protest. Right now, though, he’s too exhausted to bother with the pretense, and he realizes there’s a distinct possibility he actually _missed_ it. On his other side, Dee shifts closer, close enough that Dennis can feel the heat still radiating from her body, her soft hair tickling his nose.

Sandwiched between them like this, Dennis feels safe, like he’s right where he’s supposed to be. It’s similar to what he’d felt under the water on that sinking cruise ship, with the added bonus that this time he isn’t facing his seemingly inevitable demise.

The fact that he's landed in the wet spot is kind of unfortunate, but after a total of four orgasms he guesses they're all in the same boat.

“So, that happened,” he says eventually, shattering the silence. He still can’t quite believe the whole thing wasn’t some incredibly vivid dream.

“No shit,” Dee says, tweaking his nipple playfully. “You know, we should have just put you in the middle to begin with. It would’ve saved us all a whole lot of drama.”

Mac _hmm_ s his agreement and honest-to-god _nuzzles_ at Dennis’s shoulder like a giant cat. Truthfully, Dennis kind of doubts that any of them would have been ready for this back when they first got saddled with the bed, but he lets it slide. He knows what Dee was getting at. A thought occurs to him then, and he snorts in sudden, helpless amusement.

“What’s so funny, dude?” Mac says.

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking, we really ought to thank Frank for making us sleep in this stupid bed, you know?”

Mac makes an oddly strangled sound against Dennis’s neck. “Christ. That’s a conversation I could do without, thanks.”

“Yeah, I’m with Mac on this one,” Dee says. “How about we just keep this between the three of us, hmm?”

_The three of us._ Hearing it said out loud like that feels oddly natural, like it’s been there longer than just a few minutes. There’s already a pleasantly used feeling settling into Dennis’s muscles, and he feels contented, better than he has in months.

“I could live with that,” he says.

\--

It’s almost suffocatingly hot in the bed when he wakes up, Dee’s head resting heavy on his chest while Mac is wrapped around him tightly from behind, and it takes Dennis a few seconds of disoriented confusion before he remembers _why_ exactly he’s in the middle. When he gets there, he can’t stop the grin from spreading over his face, grateful that no-one else is awake to see it. He feels, to put it bluntly, well-fucked, a satisfying ache in all of his bones, and can’t quite remember the last time he woke up feeling this rested.

Unfortunately, he also really needs to pee.

He carefully extricates himself from under Mac’s arm and climbs over Dee on his way out of the bed. Amusingly, she doesn’t wake up; just mumbles some sleepy nonsense and rolls into the empty space Dennis leaves behind as he pulls his robe on and heads to the barhroom.

Once he’s relieved himself, he opens the bathroom cabinet and takes out the little bottle of pills he keeps in there, swallows one dry and shakes the bottle to listen to the dull, hollow sound of the remaining few rattling around in their plastic prison. He’s running out, which means he’s due for another trip to see the head-shrinker in the near future, and the prospect almost threatens to ruin his good mood.

He wonders if he’ll be able to get Dee to go with him again. She’d been surprisingly good about it the last few times, kept the snarky comments to a minimum, and much as he hates to admit it, he’d been grateful for the moral support. He remembers going to visit his sister in the psych ward after she’d set her college roommate on fire, how she’d looked completely awful but had kept her spine straight and her chin raised in defiance. The twisted pride he’d felt for her then, the way he’d promised to sneak her out of that place just to see her smile.

He supposes it makes sense that if anyone has to know about this part of him, it should be Dee.

Mind you, he’s still not exactly convinced that the psychiatrist had been right, that he really has this borderline personality disorder. Such an ugly, clinical term, like there’s something wrong with him, some diseased part that needs to be excised. The pills help, though; they keep him on an even keel, throw the world into sharp relief. When he’s on them, he can be the best possible version of himself, at the top of his game, firing on all cylinders as he should be.

The empty space on the wall where the bathroom mirror should be is a stark reminder of his last meltdown. He doesn’t want to go to that place again, not if he can help it.

He pads out the kitchen to start the coffeemaker and pulls three mugs out of the cupboard. It’s only when he hears a quiet snort from behind him and turns around to see Dee leaning against the doorframe in her robe that he realizes he’s been humming Rick Astley for the last five minutes while waiting for the coffee to boil.

“Somebody’s in a good mood,” Dee says, a knowing smirk playing around her lips. Her hair is a mess, there’s a crease from the pillowcase on her cheek and she has raccoon eyes from where her makeup smudged in the night; there’s a part of Dennis that wants to make fun of her, but the truth is she still looks unfairly good. She always does, really, which is probably why he feels compelled to tell her otherwise so often.

He rolls his eyes and wordlessly hands her a mug of coffee – cream and no sugar, just the way he knows she likes it. It’s the only way he can think to thank her, but fortunately Dee has always been good at understanding what he’s trying to say, and she gives him a real smile before taking a sip.

“I could get used to this,” she says, and Dennis isn’t sure whether she’s referring to the coffee or the sex but either way, the look of genuine contentment on her face does something weird to his insides. Before he can put too much thought into it, he takes her by the shoulders and brings his mouth to hers. He can count on one hand the number of times they’ve kissed like this, slow and unhurried; Dee tastes like coffee and toothpaste, and when he pulls away she looks surprised but not unhappy.

“What was that for?”

Dennis shrugs, suddenly bashful, dropping his gaze and turning away from her to pick up the remaining two mugs.

“I should take this in to Mac, before it gets cold.”

Dee makes a whip-crack sound in response, a knowing look glinting in her eyes. Dennis flips her off on his way out of the kitchen, and just like that, their usual balance is restored.

Mac is still mostly asleep when he enters the bedroom; all Dennis can see of him is the messy bedhead poking out from beneath the comforter. He’s drifted further into the center of the bed since Dennis and Dee vacated it, and the expanse of empty mattress looks entirely too tempting. Dennis sets the mugs down on the bedside table and slips back into the bed behind Mac, burying his face in the sleep-warm crook of his neck.

“Morning, sunshine.”

Mac mumbles an incoherent reply, unconsciously pressing back against Dennis, and Dennis feels his dick begin to firm up in response.

“Thanks for last night,” he says, and then, because he has to know: “But are you sure you’re good with all this? ‘Cause I gotta be honest, I’m sort of waiting for you to freak out on me, here.”

It’s something that’s been nagging at the back of his mind since he woke up. Dee is one thing; for all her many flaws, she’s never been particularly prone to jealousy where Dennis’s relationships are concerned – not to the same extent that Mac is, anyway. Not to mention the fact that Dee is most definitely a woman, and the gender ratios involved in this whole setup have to appeal to her more than they do to Mac. Even though Mac and Dee hadn’t so much as touched each other last night, it had still technically been a threesome; they’d all been naked together, after all.

Mac sighs and rolls over so that they’re facing one another – like this, he seems startlingly close, and it occurs to Dennis that they’ve never really done this before, this morning-after pillow-talk thing. It makes him feel oddly exposed, though not necessarily in a bad way.

“What do you want me to say, Dennis? You want me to say that this is fucking weird for me? ‘Cause it is. Maybe this thing won’t even work, I don’t know, but it has to be better than the way things were. It’s worth a shot, at least.”

The thing about Mac, Dennis thinks, is that most of the time he comes across like a complete dumbass, but every once in a while he says something that actually makes perfect sense.

“See, I knew there was a reason I loved you.”

It’s flippant, unthinking, and it takes Dennis a second to realize what he’s just said. Mac’s eyes get very wide, hopeful and guarded all at once, and Dennis could take it back or try to play it off as a joke, but he doesn’t. Instead, he reaches out to trace the dragon tattoo on the inside of Mac’s forearm, following the intricate whorls of black ink with the tip of his finger and enjoying the sensation of Mac’s flesh rising in goose pimples beneath his touch.

“Sorry I threw away your dad’s letters,” he says. He isn’t actually all that sorry that he did it, but he is sorry that he hurt Mac in doing so. Besides, it’s the gesture that counts. “Though for what it’s worth, I still think you’re better off without him.”

Mac rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know. You keep telling me.”

“Well, maybe one day you’ll actually listen to me.”

“Whatever,” Max says dismissively. “If we’re doing apologies now, I guess I’m sorry I almost got us all killed by going on that cruise. And, you know, for killing Dennis Jr. and making you eat him.”

For some reason it strikes him as so ridiculous that he bursts out laughing, because what the hell is he supposed to say to that? It isn’t okay, none of it is, but maybe they wouldn’t be where there are now without if things had gone differently in the suburbs. Mac squints at him in confusion as he creases up, and then Dennis can’t resist pulling him closer and kissing him, morning breath be damned, still laughing softly against his mouth.

“Well, this is cozy.”

Dennis pulls himself away from Mac to see Dee standing at the foot of the bed and watching them, hands still curved around her mug. She’s smirking, smug in a way that only Dee can be, but Dennis is pretty sure he can detect a hint of fondness lurking around the edges of her expression too. Mac scowls and throws a pillow at her; she attempts to sidestep it, but ends up dropping her mug in the process, spilling lukewarm coffee all over her robe and the carpeted bedroom floor.

“Oh, goddammit!” she yells, narrowing her eyes in Mac’s general direction. “You’re a dead man, McDonald.”

“Yeah? Come and get me, bitch.”

Dennis scrambles out of the way as Dee launches herself on top of Mac with an unholy shriek and starts repeatedly hitting him with the pillow. He wonders idly whether he should intervene as a full-on tussle breaks out, but he’s pretty sure it’s devoid of any genuine violence. Hell, in this apartment, this is probably what passes for domestic silliness. They’re both laughing unabashedly in between trading insults, and the sound of it makes Dennis feel lighter than he has done in months, struck by an unprecedented rush of affection for them both as he watches them wrestle like children in the ridiculous bed that Frank bought to punish them.

Maybe, just maybe, they might be able to make thing work after all. Stranger things have probably happened. Either way, he thinks, Dee was right about one thing – he could definitely get used to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finished! I feel like this is maybe too optimistic a note to end on given the source material but I want my gross horrible children to be happy, if only temporarily.
> 
> Anyway, thanks so much to everyone who's read and commented; this is by far the longest fic I've written in a long, _long_ time, so I'm really glad that people have enjoyed it and that there are others out there shipping this trash threesome with me  <3

**Author's Note:**

> I finally stopped fighting the fact that this show has taken over my brain as of late and made a Sunny sideblog over on tumblr at [ notlikeabird](http://notlikeabird.tumblr.com). It's kind of lonely over there at the minute, so please do feel free to hit me up if you're so inclined.
> 
> Also, the title of this fic wasn't actually intended to be a reference to the Rihanna song, but see if you can get it out of your head now.


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